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A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS 


DELATING TO THE 


GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION. 





Ihj the same Author , 



SPECIAL THERAPEUTICS, 


IX THE TREATMENT OE 

ACUTE AND CHRONIC DISEASES. 


Cloth, 8vo. 3s. 6d. 















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. 










































































































































































A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS 


RELATING TO THE 


GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION. 


l/ 

BY LORY MARSH, M.D. 



“See the sad crones who laid the needle by, 

The loom and spindle, fortunes to divine, 

And wrought with herbs and images a lie.” 

Ford’s Inferno. 



ILLUSTRATED. 



WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER, 

Warwick House, Paternoster Row. 













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/ 




« 





















» 




/ 



















INTRODUCTION. 

CHAPTER I. 

A Heyday of Shams.—Louis Blanc on the State of French 
Society.—Conditions Favourable to the Growth of Quackery.— 
Political Quacks.—The “ Fighting Bourbons.”—Louis XV.— 
His Immoral Court.—Madame Poisson.—The Countess du 
Barry.—Her Presentation at Court.—Arrival of Marie 

Antoinette at Compiegne.—Her Reception.9 

/ 

CHAPTER II. 

Shams in the Suite of Marie Antoinette.—Her Marriage.—Maria 
Theresa.—Ill-omened Festivities.—A King “ Going to the 
Dogs.”—Sad Condition of France.—A Strange Dialogue.— 
Political Societies. — The Order of Egyptian Masons.—The 
Grand Copt and his Sentiments. — Political Knavery at 
Home.23 


\ 






VI. 


CONTEXTS. 


CHAPTER III. 

Louis XY. at Metz, and at Versailles Thirty Years later.—His 
Dread of Death.—His End.—Remarks of Carlyle, of Rous¬ 
seau.—Signal of the New Reign.—The Funeral.—Ill-starred 
Policy.45 


C IT A P T E R I Y. 

Dr. Frederick Antony Mesmer.—His Connection with Father 
Hell.—Mesmer’s Visit to Paris and Reception there.—His 
Reputed Scientific Discovery.—Appointment of a Commission 
to Investigate it.—The Society of Mesmerists.—Object of 
Mesmerism.—Some of the Facts of Animal Magnetism.—A 
Second Commission.—Story of Prince Talleyrand.59 


CHAPTER Y. 

Presentiments.—Reverie and Abstraction.—Glimpses of the 
Future.—Mesmer a Quack.—Magnetism.—Story of a Captain 
of Marines.—Spectral Illusions.—Instance mentioned hy Sir 
Walter Scott.—The Percy Lion.—The Roue's Spectre.— 
Another Case related by Dr. Gregory.75 


CHAPTER YI. 

Cagliostro, the Great Type of Shams.—His Character, Birth, 
and Description.—Marriage.—Shams, the Offspring of cer¬ 
tain Phases of Society.—Cagliostro’s Travels.—A Proteus 
of Medicos.—His Wife.—His Imprisonment and Escape.— 
Visit to London and Return to the Continent.—Life at Paris. 
—Strange Story related by Prince Talleyrand.99 




CONTENTS. 


Vll. 


CHAPTER VII. 

Story of the Diamond Necklace.—The Jeweller Boehmer and 
his great Work.—Cardinal Prince de Rohan.—A Sham’s 
Laboratory.—Strange Dialogue.—Countess de Lamotte.—The 
Baroness D’Oliva.—Curious Account of her Introduction into 
the Conspiracy —Supposed Sale of Boehmer’s Chef-d’ceuvre. 
—Its Delivery and Disappearance.—Arrest and Trial of the 
Conspirators.131 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Mystery of the Diamond Necklace still unexplained.—Curious 
Suspicion.—Ill-fated Procession.—rTrial of Marie Antoinette. 
—Retrospect.—Her Journey to France .—A la Mort .—Strange 
Episode of the Revolution.—Progress of Ideas.—Absiu’d Cus¬ 
toms.—Effects produced by the Revolution.151 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Age of Reason.—Vincent Priessnitz.—Dr. and Mrs. Hahne¬ 
mann.—Helen Berkeley’s account of her visit to them.—The 
Quack Doctor.—The Dispensary .—The Legal Profession.— 
On Religious Shams.173 


CHAPTER X. 


On some current Shams 


195 











INTBODUCTION. 


«Vp F any of my readers should feel tempted to believe 
that a feeling of professional jealousy at the mar¬ 
vellous success of Shams in all ages has dictated the 
following pages, I beg to assure him that such is not 
the case; and he will the more readily believe me if he 
considers that Shams are not confined to Medicine 
alone, but are often supreme in the political, religious, 
and scientific professions as well. But the reason we 
hear more of quack doctors than of other impostors is 
because, as a rule, the former line of business is more 
profitable, and furnishes the richest harvest of dupes. 








2 


INTRODUCTION. 


It has been said that “ the pleasure is as great in 
being cheated as to cheat;” hut this only holds good 
till the cheating process is discovered; when I am sure 
that the meekest dupe must be roused to fierce indigna¬ 
tion against those by whom he has been deceived, not 
unmingled with a feeling of humility on account of his 
own misplaced faith. No doubt, faith is a good thing 
when rightly directed; true faith in God, for instance, 
not only saves a man from superstitions and delusions 
of all kinds, but enables him to battle with and triumph 
over the hard necessities of practical life. But this kind 
of faith rigorously presupposes an honest and cleanly 
life ; and every-day experience teaches us — even 
the records of the law courts—that the dupe, in 
every nine cases out of ten, is merely permitted to be 
cheated in punishment of his own want of moral straight¬ 
forwardness. But what can we say of faith in a man 
whose exorbitant professions brand him at once as an 
impostor ? It can only be accounted for on that deep 
principle which has always predisposed poor human 
nature to believe in the prophets of “ pleasant things.” 
Matters have only to be put before us in a light in which 
we wish to see them, and we are all prone to borrow 


INTRODUCTION. 


3 


any spectacles that may be offered to assist ns in the 
search after what we wish to find, no matter whether 
it be political power, religious belief, or the cure of real 
or imaginary diseases. 

This being a general law of human nature, some 
scoundrel is always at hand to “exploit” it, whispering 
in our ear that he alone is able to administer the very 
panacea we require. 

Once befooled by such impostors, there is no limit to 
the absurdities of which the human mind is capable. 
Were it not for the betrayal of professional confidence, 
I could many “talcs unfold” of blighted happiness, 
ruined prospects, and premature death, the result of the 
unscrupulous practices of impostors, against whom the 
public have a right to look for protection to the State. 
But few are found to interest themselves in such social 
questions, until they have too dearly bought their own 
experience; which, unfortunately, they arc often unwill¬ 
ing to give others the benefit of, not wishing that the 
world should know the extent and nature of transactions 
in which they have played so inglorious a part. 


4 


INTRODUCTION. 


The fable of the Spider and the Fly has a much 

more universal application than many of us are disposed 

to admit. Even at the present day, there are more 

spiders about our path than people imagine; and it is 
# . 

little flattering to our vanity to know that they find a 
goodly harvest of flies. Some forms of commercial im¬ 
posture, for instance, ease men of their money; hut how¬ 
ever loud and violent the denunciations of the sufferers 
against swindles of this kind, the ruin and desolation 
they occasion are too insignificant to admit of a 
moment’s comparison between them and the forms of 
imposture that lead men and women to imagine them¬ 
selves the victims of untold miseries, which only owe 
their existence to a diseased imagination. All classes 
of society, of both sexes, are exposed to the latter kind 
of imposture, while the greater their wealth and means 
of happiness and enjoyment, the greater the harvest 
they afford the quacks. The dupes of the commer¬ 
cial swindles are often men over-greedy of gain, for 
whose protection it is not necessary to take much 
trouble. What they lose in money they sometimes 
gain in common sense and prudence; the investment 
often bringing them in a rich return in a way they 


INTRODUCTION. 


5 


never expected. There are many people who in early life 
have lost their fortune and suffered ruin by some com¬ 
mercial swindle, that have so far profited by their 
experience, as ultimately to become wiser and better 
men. 

No such compensating process, however, can be 
alleged for the man or woman who has suffered loss of 
health, and whose mind and body have been ruined 
by the withering touch of quackery. At the period of 
their ruin, such persons were mostly young, over¬ 
confident, and credulous, and therefore sure to be 
trapped by some of the ingenious gentlemen who have 
made human folly their special study. In the interests 
of such persons, and as one whose attention has long 
been directed to this subject, I have thought it well in 
the following pages to give a brief account of some 
notable quacks who have had their influence for evil 
upon modem society ; by way of indicating, especially 
to those who may be foolish enough to believe that the 
inexorable laws of nature can sometimes be outwitted 
by an impostor, the direction in which their ruin 
inevitably lies. 


6 


INTRODUCTION. 


The Sham, we know, is a very Proteus in his dis¬ 
guises; but there are some distinguishing features about 
him, some extravagance in his pretensions, which may 
always lead to his identification, whether in a Cagliostro, 
or in a London practitioner who has patented the 
elixir vita. Here, for instance, is the true ring of the 
quack—the mark of Cain upon the brotherhood of lies : 
—“You shall follow me,” said Paracelsus, “you, 
Avicenna, Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana, Mesues—you, 
gentlemen of Paris, Montpellier, Germany, Cologne, 
Yienna, and whomsoever the Rhine and Danube 
nourish; you who inhabit the isles of the sea; you 
likewise, Dalmatians, Athenians; thou Greek, thou 
Jew ; all shall follow me, and the monarchy shall be 
mine! ” Here is the inflated soul, the overweening 
pretensions, and the contempt of the honest part of 
the profession, by which quacks may always be recog¬ 
nized. 


Of course I am not so over-sanguine as to imagine 
that my little book can make any sensible impression 
upon the ranks of the impostors; but if it saves one 
victim from their clutches, and in so far lessens the 


INTRODUCTION. 7 

sum of human misery, I shall be well content. Perhaps 
the most certain advice to my readers to preserve them 
from the clutches of these human harpies, would he— 
“ To be pure in mind and to fear God : ” but this strain 
has been said and sung ever since the world began; and 
still the crowds of dupes—and of dupes accounted wise 
in their generation—come up to the slaughter day by 
day and year by year. There is one consolation for 
them, however; their very gobemoucherie presupposes 
some innocence, while so much cannot be predicated of 
the Shams. Prom falsehood to falsehood they graduate 
in malignity, until they blossom into full-blown Devils, 
out of whom every element of human goodness and 
truth seems to have been carefully extracted. And 
well they often prosper in their time; but we must con¬ 
sider that they are playing at long howls, and that the 
game is not always scored within our visible horizon. 
Put there is a sure ground for our very consolatory 
belief—although the quack himself may little dream of 
it, sleeping secure upon his comfortable precipice—that 
his genius for deception will be a poor refuge for him 


8 


INTRODUCTION. 


when that awful eternal Sunlight shall one day sud¬ 
denly hurst in upon his house—the Sunlight in which 
nothing that is not true, nothing that is not pure and 
innocent, may live! 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


CHAPTER I. 


A Heyday of Shams.—Louis Blanc on the State of French 
Society.—Conditions Favourable to the Growth of Quackery.— 


Political Quacks.—^he “Fighting Bourbons.”—Louis XV.— 


His Immoral Court.—Madame Poisson.—The Countess du 
Barry.—Her Presentation at Court.—Arrival of Marie 
Antoinette at Compiegne.—Her Reception. 

HERE is a certain amount of historical interest 



Jjfis attending the lives of Quacks, as well as criminals 
of all sorts. Some have proved themselves greater 
adepts at their caUing than others; and just as in the 
annals of criminality we have our Lucrezia Eorgias 
and causes celebres, which from time to time startle 





10 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


us with their tragic character; so amongst Quacks we 
find some who have proved more successful than their 
competitors in the impostures practised upon the cre¬ 
dulous of their times. To such an extent does this 
hold good in the case of some of the more notorious im¬ 
postors ; so frequently have they been found amongst 
the companions and confidants of princes and nobles; 
that their names have become intimately associated 
with the history of the age in which they lived. 

Conspicuous among the class referred to are the 
names of Mesmer and Cagliostro, being the most pro¬ 
minent examples of the order to which they belong. 
In glancing at the lives of some of the most notorious 
empirics, we are at once struck with the great similarity 
of character which runs through them all. They appear 
to possess a mental organization peculiarly fitting them 
for their occupation. Truly may it be said that quacks, 
like poets, “must be to the manner born.” You cannot 
teach a quack his business; he must adopt it from the 
native impulse of his mind. Just in proportion as his 
knowledge of human nature is equal to his necessarily 
low cunning, so will his success be. Mankind seem 
to possess an instinctive love for the marvellous, and a 
superstitious feeling of curiosity, as almost a part of 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


11 


their existence. Upon this feeling it is the business of 
the quack to work ; so that it is hardly surprising that 
even men of strong intellect and sense sometimes find 
it difficult to steer clear of impostors, whether medical 
or political, or clothed in the mask of religious hypo¬ 
crisy : so clever are these impostors to find out the 
weak points in our poor human nature. 

The interval between the years 1740 and 1795 will 
always he regarded in history as the period when 
imposture and impostors of all kinds reigned most 
triumphantly throughout Europe. Looking hack upon 
the past, it seems to us almost impossible to realize 
the universality with which quacks and quackery ruled 
the world, before the outbreak of that great event, 
which, as it were, removed the film from men’s eyes 
and taught them to begin to think. The event to 
which we refer is the American AUar of Independence. 
Since that struggle took place, which resulted in the 
practical carrying out of a new system of government, 
a gradual change has been going on. To this general 
change quack doctors, like cheats of every other 
description, have found it necessary to adapt them¬ 
selves, so as to rise equal to the modern conditions of 
society on which they prey. This is to be observed in 


12 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


the marked difference between Quacks of the 18th and 
19th centuries; although the question as to whether 
quackery has improved with the progressive improve¬ 
ment of the world, may he one not easy to decide. 

Although in many respects an improvement has taken 
place, we may venture to assert that quackery has not 
yet arrived at that stage of development when the evil 
has altogether ceased to exist. A general crusade 
against empirics has been initiated, and it is sincerely 
to he hoped that it may not he without effect. Into 
the pit which they love to dig for their fellow-men, 
they might he most fittingly consigned themselves. In 
England the State has furnished powers amply sufficient 
to grapple with the evil, which it only requires a 
strong will and concerted action to uproot entirely. 

Louis Blanc, in speaking of the condition of society in 
Paris previous to the advent of Mesmer and Cagliostro, 
attributes their marvellous success to the state of public 
feeling at the time : perhaps by way of apology for the 
extremes of absurdity into which his countrymen were 
betrayed. It is certain, however, that these impostors 
appeared just before the outbreak of the great Eevolu- 
tion, marked as it was by such hideous orgies of satanic 
cruelty and murder. To render our subject more in- 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


13 


telligible, it will be necessary to take a cursory glance 
at the condition of France at that particular crisis— 
when she was not only about to dethrone her legitimate 
king and to establish a Republic—itself after a few 
years destined to end in anarchy—but to take another 
and more fatal step : the dethronement of Religion and 
the substitution of Reason in its stead. Old beliefs had 
become unsettled, and men who professed to believe 
nothing, were ready, in reality, to believe anything, 
however absurd. In reference to this subject a recent 
writer remarks: “ There is a lingering touch of super¬ 
stition in all men; from reverence for the unknown, 
from the occult and omnipresent wonders of nature— 
probably no man living is exempt. It is well that it 
is so. Environed on all hands by marvels which finite 
apprehension fails to grasp, subject to ever-recurring 
doubts which man cannot answer, and with mysteries 
which merely succumb to time, and perseverance, and 
labour, how could it well be otherwise ? The forces 
that surround us are many of them unseen. Electricity, 
galvanism, the divisible properties and influences of 
light, are invisible. This would excuse, did it not even 
explain, man’s credulity. He sees these forces only in 
their results. In spite of some of his senses, he is coerced 
to accept the existence of these powers. Upon these 


14 


A BOOK AEOI T T SHAMS. 


elements of curiosity and credulity in man, the charlatan 
works. Environed by terrors,—grounded by philosophy, 
no less than by faith, in the eternity of spirits as in the 
indissolubility of matter—man looks backward and for¬ 
ward with an ardour stimulated by anticipation, streng¬ 
thened by hope. He sighs for a happier lot than that 
which this probationary world affords. He is thus ever 
open to cherish hopes of snatching a fearful glance at 
futurity—to peep through the blanket of the dark. 
Erom the remotest time man has attempted to bridge 
the unknown gulf, and, in anticipation, leap the world 
to come. He has been thus ever disposed to listen to 
any seer, to follow any leader who would profess to 
guide him in the perilous journey. From such a species 
of faith, no age, country, or class, has been wholly 
exempt.” 

Political Quacks played such an important part in the 
world’s history at and before the epoch of the great 
French Revolution—especially in connection with the 
unfortunate Marie Antoinette,—and many of the acts 
of mis-government terminating with the violent deaths 
of Louis XYI. and his Queen, were so clearly due. to 
his predecessor Louis XY., that, even at the risk of 
wearying the reader, we shall venture to refer at some 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


15 


length to the history of the latter part of the reign of 
this last-named monarch. Our desire is to show, not 
only, as M. Louis Blanc has stated, that the marvel¬ 
lous success of Quacks, during the concluding half of 
the eighteenth century, was due to the condition of 
national feeling at the time ; hut still further to prove 
that the scepticism and credulity of the age was of 
gradual growth, and not the result of a sudden vagary 
of popular feeling. The theory of the divine right of 
kings, which had been maintained by the Bourbons for 
centuries, had already ceased to command popular 
respect; and the system which it inculcated had come to 
be regarded as a sham and a mere scheme of political 
imposture. Scepticism in this direction, as well as in 
the dogmas and excessive formularies of an intolerant 
priesthood, disposed the people “to listen to any quack, 
and to follow any leader who professed to guide them 
in seeking their political and religious liberty.” 

The Bourbons, who had occupied the throne of France 
for so many years, had furnished a long line of fighting 
kings , the last of the race for all practical purposes being 
Louis XY. His successor, Louis XVI., presented none 
of the characteristics of the house from which he came; 
he was no fighter, and so fond of mechanics that he 


16 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


would have made an excellent locksmith ; hut he was 
certainly a very indifferent king. In the early part of 
his reign, Louis XY. appears to have displayed all the 
fire, courage, and bon esprit of his ancestors. President 
Henault, speaking of this period of his life, says: ‘ ‘ This 
Prince, in the year 1744, while hastening from one end 
of his kingdom to the other, and suspending his con¬ 
quests in Flanders that he might fly to the assistance of 
Alsace, was arrested at Metz by a malady which 
threatened to cut short his days. At the news of this, 
Paris, all in terror, seemed a city taken by storm : the 
churches resounded with supplications and groans ; the 
prayers of priests and people were every moment inter¬ 
rupted by their sobs ; and it was from an interest so dear 
and tender that he acquired the surname of ‘ Louis the 
Well-beloved.’ ” We shall he chiefly interested in 
noting some of the acts of this king during the thirty- 
one years which intervened between the period of his 
illness at Metz and the fatal attack of small-pox which 
terminated his life at Versailles, on the 9th of May, 
1774. The two periods present such opposite pictures, 
that we at last fail altogether to recognize any trace of 
that character which acquired for him the people’s title 
of the “ Well-beloved.” 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS, 


17 


In the latter part of his life, the King appears to have 
given himself up to the gratification of every personal 
and sensual enjoyment. He became indifferent to the 
wants of his people, or the happiness and well-being of 
those over whom he was set to rule. His court was 
the most licentious and immoral of any in Europe. He 
chose as his favourite Madame Poisson, the daughter of 
a butcher, whom he created Marchioness de Pompadour 
in 1745. She appears to have acquired complete 
ascendancy over her royal master, and is supposed to 
have had considerable influence in State affairs. This 
influence she used with great judgment and wisdom; 
so much so, that her death, which took place in 1764, 
was a matter of considerable regret to the nation at 
large. The next person on whom the King’s affection 
alighted was Marie Jeanne Barry, a milliner in Paris— 
a woman of remarkable beauty, who, having passed 
through various stages of vice, was ultimately intro¬ 
duced to the King by his valet-de-chambre. To enable 
her to be presented at court she was ennobled, by 
having conferred upon her the title of the Countess du 
Barry. She was ignorant, intriguing, and extravagant, 
though not ungrateful or ungenerous. During the reign 
of her royal patron she was all-powerful. Her presence 
at court was exceedingly repugnant to the old nobility, 

B 


18 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


especially the Due de Choiseul, who, with the Duchess 
de Grrammout and the Royal Princesses, was most 
anxious to hasten the arrival of the Dauphiness, Marie 
Antoinette, at Versailles, in order to prevent the pre¬ 
sentation at court of Madame du Barry. It was thought 
the King would never allow his mistress to he presented 
to the bride of his grandson, the heir-apparent to the 
throne of France. Madame du Barry on this occasion 
displayed the full force of her character. To her the 
presentation, in due form, by one of patrician birth, 
was of the utmost importance. Every cunning artifice 
which herself, her brother and sister, could devise, 
was had recourse to, to counteract the machinations of 
those who may be regarded as being her natural enemies. 
The Countess succeeded in getting presented at Versailles 
the day before the arrival of the Dauphiness : on which 
occasion all the ladies of the court, to mark their sense 
of displeasure at the proceeding, absented themselves 
from the levee, on the plea of sudden and alarming in¬ 
disposition. The ceremony having been concluded, the 
King, in a loud distinct voice, spoke as follows: “Ladies,, 
her Royal Highness the Dauphiness will be at Com- 
piegne to-morrow ; we shall meet her precisely at noon. 
All the ladies who have been presented will go, except, 
however, those who are ill; for the journey might be 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


19 


fatiguing; and her Royal Highness would he sorry to 
aggravate their indisposition.” The sarcastic allusion 
to the indisposition of the ladies was intended to mark 
the royal displeasure at the absence of those who had 
found it convenient to adopt the plea of sickness on the 
occasion of the presentation of the Countess du Barry. 

Let us now imagine the Royal Party journeying to 
Compiegne, to witness the arrival of Marie Antoinette. 
Travelling in her suite were Prince Louis de Rohan, 
Bishop of Strasbourg, and Count Cagliostro. In the 
course of our narration these two individuals will be 
found linked together in the closest and most intimate 
friendship, and housed and fed at the government ex¬ 
pense in the Bastille; whither the villany of the one, 
and the gross credulity of the other, had conducted 
them. But reverting to the doings at Compiegne, we 
behold one of the most dazzling pictures in Prench 
history. Triumphal arches of flowers and evergreens, 
with congratulatory inscriptions in Latin, Prench, and 
German, everywhere marked the line of progress the 
cortege was intended to take. Dumas says: “ The 
Dauphin had arrived incognito, with his two brothers, 
about eleven o’clock the night before. Very early in 
the morning he mounted his horse, as if he had been a 


20 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


private gentleman; and followed by his brothers, the 
Count de Provence and the Count d’Artois—the one 
fifteen and the other thirteen years of age—he galloped 
off in the direction of Bibecourt, the road by which the 
Princess was to approach. Mounted on swift horses, 
the three brothers accomplished three or four leagues 
in half-an-hour. The eldest had set out serious, the 
two others laughing. At half-past eight they returned, 
the Count de Provence almost ill-tempered, the Count 
d’Artois more gay than before. The Dauphin was un¬ 
easy, the Count de Provence envious, and the Count 
d’Artois enchanted, about one and the same thing—the 
beauty of the Dauphiness. The grave, jealous, and 
careless character of each prince respectively was 
written on his face. At ten o’clock the look-out em¬ 
ployed to watch for the expected train, announced that 
a white flag was displayed on the steeple of the Church 
of Claives, which was to be the signal that the 
Dauphiness was approaching. The bells of the church 
commenced to ring, and were answered by the firing of 
cannon. 

At that instant, as if he had only waited for this 
signal, the King entered Compiegne in a carriage drawn 
by eight horses, between a double file of his body-guards, 


























A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


21 


and followed by the immense train of court carriages. 
The guards and dragoons at a gallop opened a passage 
through the crowd; which was divided between two 
feelings—desire to see the King and curiosity with 
regard to the Dauphiness. One hundred carriages, 
drawn by four horses, extending nearly a league in 
length, contained four hundred ladies, and as many 
lords of the noblest families of Trance. These hundred 
carriages were escorted by out-riders, heyducks, foot¬ 
men, and pages. The gentlemen of the King’s house¬ 
hold were on horseback, and formed a brilliant army, 
glittering like a sea of velvet and gold, waving plumes 
and silk, in the midst of the dust raised by the horses’ 
feet. They halted an instant at Compiegne, then slowly 
proceeded to the spot agreed on for the meeting, and 
marked by a cross, near the village of Magny. All the 
young nobility thronged around the Dauphin, and all 
the old around the King. On the other side, the 
Dauphiness was also slowly approaching the appointed 
place. At length the two parties met. On both sides 
the courtiers left their carriages; two only remained 
occupied—that of the King and that of the Dauphiness. 

The door of the Dauphiness’s carriage was opened, 
and the young Archduchess sprang lightly to the 


22 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


ground, and advanced to the royal carriage, The King, 
on perceiving his daughter-in-law, ordered the door to 
he opened, and hurriedly got out. 

The Dauphiness had calculated her time so well, 
that just as the King put his foot to the ground she 
was close to him, and sank on her knee. “ He 
raised the young Princess and embraced her tenderly, 
yet casting a look upon her which made her blush.” 

Let us now glance at some of the events to which 
this tawdry and pretentions scene—a conspicuous sham 
in itself—forms a fitting prelude. 



CHAPTER II. 

—O— 

Shams in the Suite of Marie Antoinette.—Her Marriage.—Maria 
Theresa.—Ill-omened Festivities.—A King “ Going to the 
Dogs.”—Sad Condition of France.—A Strange Dialogue.— 
Political Societies.—The Order of Egyptian Masons.—The 
Grand Copt and his Sentiments.—Political Knavery at Home. 


MMHE circumstances attending the introduction of 
an amiable Princess to her adopted home and 
family certainly seem to have little direct connection 
with our subject; but in her suite, as we have said, 
were to he found two of the greatest impostors the 
world has ever known. It was, moreover, essentially 
an age of Shams; everything from the Throne down¬ 
wards wearing a false and hollow character. Quack 
rulers, priests, doctors, politicians, swarmed when 
Marie Antoinette made her entrance into Prance; and 
no hook about Shams could properly leave unnoticed 
the circumstances of the time. 





24 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


Marie Antoinette was attended, as before mentioned* 
by tbe Cardinal de Eohan, whose name afterwards 
became so intimately associated with her unfortunate 
history; Count Cagliostro was also there, travelling in 
the disguise of an officer in the service of the King of 
Prussia, closely observing events, and gaining a know¬ 
ledge which, at a later date, we shall find him making 
use of to influence the unholy passion which the 
Cardinal had already begun to indulge towards his 
Eoyal mistress. A reputed saint, De Eohan, had 
fully surrendered himself to no saintly spirit, to whom 
we shall find him as we proceed ready to yield willing 
obedience. 

The Dauphiness having been introduced to her future 
husband and the rest of the Eoyal Family, the party 
returned to Compiegne. On the following day they 
repaired to Versailles, and, amidst the splendour of 
court liveries, pontifical ceremonial, and the brilliancy 
of the most extravagant and servile court in the world, 
the nuptial knot was tied, to the rejoicing of all 
France. The King wearied by the ceremony, and 
especially by the State dinner which followed, dis¬ 
missed the company, and retired to his apartment at 
nine o’clock, thankful, no doubt, that as far as he was 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


25 


concerned, the day had come and gone, which was to 
witness the decline of one court, and the rising into 
anticipated brilliancy of its successor. The Dauphin and 
his bride on retiring to their apartments, proceeded to 
present themselves before the multitude, which thronged 
the court-yard and terraces of Versailles to witness the 
grand display of fireworks in honour of the occasion— 
for no fete was then, as now, considered by the Parisians 
as complete without a display of fireworks. Previous to 
the commencement of the fireworks, Marie Antoinette 
stole away to address a line to her mother. In such an 
act of filial devotion there appears nothing very remark¬ 
able, although many have pointed to it as evidence of 
superlative affection. Doubtless every young lady, 
under similar circumstances, would be anxious to do the 
same. In this respect Marie Antoinette simply followed 
the dictates of a daughter’s affection, for a mother such 
as few women have ever had: for Maria Theresa was a 
woman of whom her people had just cause to he proud as 
the “ mother of her country.” It was this woman who, 
deserted by all her friends, when it was sought to wrest 
from her the kingdom of Hungary and Bohemia, bore 
in her arms the lovely child, now Dauphiness of France, 
and throwing herself upon her Hungarian subjects 
addressed them in the following words:—“ Abandoned 


26 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


by my friends, persecuted by my enemies, attacked by 
my nearest relations, I have no other resource than in 
your fidelity, in your courage and constancy. I com¬ 
mit to your hands the child of your kings.” Such a 
spectacle was calculated to rouse the fire of the noble 
Hungarians. They drew their swords and exclaimed 
with one voice, “We will die for onr King, Maria 
Theresa.” So it was not likely that that child could 
have forgotten her mother on her bridal day, when 
she became the wife of him who would one day sit 
upon the throne of Charlemagne. 

France had, on the other hand, especial reason to 
rejoice, that a Princess so young, so beautiful, had 
come as it were to purify the atmosphere which neces¬ 
sarily surrounded a court where Madame du Barry 
reigned supreme. As she stood by the side of the 
Hue de Brissac to witness the display of fireworks, 
and heard the congratulations of the multitude, she 
might well exclaim—What a crowd ! What a number! 
and almost believe the old courtier when he replied, 
“All these, Mademoiselle, are your lovers.” 

“ The evening,” says Dumas, “ at first lovely and 
serene, by degrees became overcast, and gusts of wind, 
gradually increasing in violence, tossed the branches 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


27 


wildly to and fro, as if they had been shaken by some 
giant arm; while immense masses of clond hurried 
across the heavens, like squadrons rushing to the charge. 
The illuminations were suddenly extinguished, and, as 
if fate had determined to change the general rejoicings 
into gloom, no sooner had the first rockets been dis¬ 
charged, than the rain descended in torrents as if the 
heavens had opened, and a loud and startling peal of 
thunder announced a terrible convulsion of the elements. 

‘ ‘ Meanwhile the people of Versailles and Paris fled like 
a flock of frightened birds, scattered over the gardens, in 
the roads, in the woods, pursued in all directions by 
thick hail, which beat down the flowers in the gardens, 
the foliage in the forest, the wheat and the barley in 
the fields. By morning, however, all this elemental 
chaos was reduced to order; but the first rays of light, 
darting from between copper-coloured clouds, displayed 
to view the ravages of the nocturnal hurricane. Ver¬ 
sailles was no longer to be recognized. The ground had 
imbibed that deluge of water, the trees had absorbed 
that deluge of fire ; everywhere were seas of muddy 
water, and trees broken, twisted, calcined by that 
serpent with burning gripe called lightning. As soon 
as it was light Louis XV., whose terror was so great 


28 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


that he could not sleep, ordered his valet Lebel, who 
had never left him during the night, to dress him. He 
then proceeded to the bridal chamber, and, pushing open 
the door, shuddered on perceiving the future Queen of 
France reclining on a prie-dieu, pale, and with eyes 
swollen and violet-coloured like those of the sublime 
Magdalen of Bubens. Her terror, caused by the hurri¬ 
cane, had at length been suspended by sleep, and the 
first dawn of morning which stole into the apartment, 
tinged in religious reverence her long white robe with 
an azure hue. At the further end of the chamber, in 
an arm-chair pushed back to the wall, and surrounded 
by a pool of water which had forced its way through 
the shattered windows, sat the Dauphin of France, 
pale as his young bride, and like her, having the per¬ 
spiration of nightmare on his brow. The nuptial bed 
was in precisely the same state as on the preceding 
evening. 

“ Louis XV. knit his brow ; a pain keener than any 
he had yet felt, darted through that brow like a red hot 
iron. He shook his head, heaved a deep sigh, and 
returned to his apartments, more gloomy and more 
affrighted, perhaps, at that moment, than he had been 
during the night.” 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


29 


Two days after that terrible night the Dauphiness 
went to dine with the King at the Tuileries. Paris was 
illuminated, and the accustomed fireworks about to be 
displayed. The beginning seemed to promise well for 
the end. The crowd filled the Place Louis XV., which 
was capable of accommodating six hundred thousand 
persons. Whilst all eyes were eagerly watching the 
spectacle, a rocket was observed to take a wrong direc¬ 
tion, and immediately the whole stage, on which the 
fireworks were erected, became enveloped in flames. 
The rush and confusion which followed defied all 
description. Twelve hundred persons were left dead 
upon the ground, besides numbers who threw themselves 
into the Seine and perished. What a sickening thought 
for the young bride ! She sent all the money she pos¬ 
sessed to the Lieutenant of the Police, for the relief of 
the distressed, and together with her husband and all 
Prance, sorrowed over the loss of life, which converted 
what was intended as a national rejoicing into a national 
mourning. Soon after this the Dauphiness became 
tired and wearied of the pomp and ceremony of State, 
and, by the King’s permission, retired to Trianon, the 
miniature Versailles; where we will leave her until 
she re-enters Paris as the Queen of Louis XVI. 


30 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


After the marriage of the Dauphin in 1740, the King 
devoted himself more completely than ever to the plea¬ 
sures of the chase, the table, and the society of the 
Countess du Barry, who appears at this time to have 
acquired a complete ascendancy over him. He hated 
business, and seemed at this period to have but one 
fixed idea with regard to affairs of State; which was, 
as the Americans would phrase it, that “the machine 
would run his time.” Meanwhile a school of philoso¬ 
phers and pamphleteers, represented by Rousseau, Vol¬ 
taire, Marat, Mirabeau, and others, had grown into im¬ 
portance—their pens always busy, bringing to the surface 
ever-recurring instances of favouritism, peculation, and 
imbecility—holding up to public gaze the 'wrongs, the 
oppressions and hardships of the poor, and thus attract¬ 
ing to themselves, by slow degrees, the great mass of 
the people. But the Bourbons, as well as the old nobility 
of France, were essentially a fighting race ; and being 
incapable of appreciating any other career, were conse¬ 
quently deaf to the philosophers. “Remark,” says 
Carlyle, “how from amid the wrecks and dust of this 
universal decay new powers are fashioning themselves, 
adapted to the new time and its destinies. 


“ Besides the old noblesse, originally of fighters, 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


31 


there is a recognized noblesse of Lawyers, whose gala- 
day and proud battle-day even now is; an unrecognized 
noblesse of Commerce, powerful enough, with money 
in its pocket; lastly, powerfullest of all, least recog¬ 
nized of all, a noblesse of Literature : without steel on 
their thigh, without gold in their purse, but with the* 
grand thaumaturgic faculty of thought in their head. 
French Philosophism has arisen ; in which little word 
how much do we include. There, indeed, lies properly 
the cardinal symptom of the whole wide-spread malady. 
Faith is gone out; Scepticism is come in. Evil abounds 
and accumulates ; no man has faith to withstand it, to 
amend it, to begin by amending himself; it must even 
go on accumulating. While hollow languor and vacuity 
is the lot of the upper, and want and stagnation of the 
lower classes, universal misery is certain enough : what 
other thing is certain ? 

“ That a lie cannot be believed ? Philosophism knows 
only this: her other belief is mainly that, in spiritual, 
super-sensual matters, no belief is possible. Unhappy ! 
Nay, as yet the contradiction of a lie is some kind of 
* belief; but the lie with its contradiction once swept 
away, what will remain ? 

“ In such a France, as in a powder-tower, where fire 


32 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


unquenched and now unquenchable is smoking and 
smouldering all round, has Louis XV. lain down to die. 
With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his fleur-de-lis 
has been shamefully struck down in all lands and on all 
seas; poverty invades even the royal exchequer, and 
tax-farming can squeeze out no more; there is a quarrel 
of twenty-five years’ standing with the Parliament; 
everywhere want, dishonesty, unbelief, and hot-brained 
sciolists for state-physicians ; it is a portentous hour. 
Such things can the eye of history see in the sick-room 
of King Louis, which were invisible to the courtiers 
there. It is twenty years gone Christmas-day, since 
Lord Chesterfield, summing up what he had noted of 
this same Prance, wrote, and sent off by post on Decem¬ 
ber 25th, 1753, the following words, that have become 
memorable : ‘ In short, all the symptoms which I have 
ever met with in history, previous to great changes and 
revolutions in government, now exist and daily increase 
in France! ’” 

Whilst this decadence of royalty was gradually but 
surely undermining the authority and power of the 
Bourbon race, the people were subscribing for a statue 
for Voltaire. The name of Bousseau charmed the poor 
and middle-class—the latter then dawning as it were 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


33 


into existence—whilst it struck terror into those who 
should have proved themselves the shepherds of the 
people. It*was for Louis XYI. a misfortune that he 
was horn in such an age: for if the monarchy had hut a 
short time to live in France, he of all men was the most 
likely to hurry on the work of its destruction. The 
King’s aversion to business is exemplified by the follow¬ 
ing dialogue with his Minister of Police, as reported by 
M. Dumas:— 

“Sire,” said the Minister, “ may I beg your Majesty 
to allow me a few moments on business of the utmost 
importance ? ” 

“ Oh, I have very little time now, M. de Sartines,” 
said the King, beginning to yawn. 

“ Only two words, your Majesty.” 

“ About what?” 

“About those people with the second sight—those 
illuminati—those workers of miracles.” 

“ Pooh! Jugglers. Give them permission to exercise 
their trade, and there will he nothing to fear from them.” 

“ The matter is more serious than your Majesty sup- 
c 


34 


A KOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


poses. Every day we have new Masonic lodges formed: 
—they are now a powerful sect, attracting to them all 
the enemies of monarchy—the philosophers, the ency¬ 
clopaedists. Voltaire is to he received by them in great 
state.” 

“He? he is dying.” 

“ He, Sire ? Oh, no; he is not such a fool.” 

“ He has confessed-” 

“ Merely a trick.” 

“-In the habit of a Capuchin.” 

“ That was an impiety, Sire. But with regard to 
these Ereemasons, they are always active: they write, 
they talk, they form associations, correspond with 
foreign countries—they intrigue, they threaten—even 
now they are full of expectation of a great chief or head 
of the whole body, as I have learned from some words 
which escaped from one of their number.” 

“Well, Sartines, when this chief comes, catch him 
and put him in the Bastille,—and the whole affair is 
settled.” 



A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


35 


“ Sire, these persons have great resources.” 

“ Have they greater than you, sir, who have the 
whole police of a large kingdom ? ” 

“ Your Majesty was induced to expel the Jesuits—it 
was the philosophers whom you should have expelled.” 

“Come, come!—No more about those poor quill- 
drivers ! ” 

“Sire, those quills are dangerous which are cut by 
the penknife of Damiens.” Louis XY. turned pale. 
“These philosophers, Sire, whom you despise-” 

“Well, sir?” 

“Will destroy the monarchy, Sire.” 

“How long will they take to do that?” Sartines 
stared at this coolness. 

“ How can I tell, Sire ? Perhaps fifteen, twenty, or 
thirty years.” 

“ Well, my dear friend, in fifteen or twenty years I 
shall be no more; so talk of all these things to my suc¬ 
cessor.” 

The anxiety expressed concerning the effect of the 


36 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


Political Societies, which were springing into existence 
in all parts of the kingdom, was bnt too well founded. 
Availing himself of the existing state of tilings in Prance 
at this time, we find Cagliostro forsaking the trade of 
empiric to become politician, plotting and intriguing 
against the King, and using all his craft to overthrow 
the State and help on the Revolution. Ho doubt he 
vainly hoped to make his account out of the general 
confusion that was sure to follow. At this time, as 
Head, or Grand Copt, of the Order of Egyptian Masons, 
the arch-impostor wielded great political influence. 
These Egyptian Masons were a sham society, having 
nothing in common with our Preemasons, but pretend¬ 
ing to have for their object the regeneration of mankind. 
By means of Mesmerism, Alchemy, the Elixir of Life, 
and other baits, Cagliostro was enabled to lead the 
society at his will. The following unique conversation, 
reported as having taken place at a Lodge of the Order 
in Paris, will give an idea of the influence of the 
Grand Copt, and the style of opinions which were con¬ 
sidered “ fine ” during that heyday of Shams:— 

“You understand,” said Cagliostro, “it is not to go 
through some Masonic ceremonies that I have come 
from the East. I have come to say to you, brethren : 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


37 


Take the wings and the eyes of the eagle! Rise above 
the world, and cast your eyes over its kingdoms! 
Nations form but one vast body. Men, though bom at 
different periods, in different ranks, arrive all in turn at 
that goal, to reach which they were created. They are 
continually advancing, though seemingly stationary; and 
if they appear to retreat a step from time to time, it is 
but to collect strength for a bound which shall carry 
them over some obstacle in their way. France is the 
advance-guard of nations. Put a torch in her hand, and 
though it kindle a wide-spreading flame, it will be 
salutary, for it will enlighten the world. 

“An old king, weak, vicious, yet not so old, not so 
weak, not so vicious as the monarchy which he repre¬ 
sents, sits on the throne of France. He has but few 
years to live. Events must be prepared to succeed his 
death. France is the keystone of the arch ; let but this 
stone be unfixed, and the monarchical edifice will fall! 
Ay, the day that Europe’s most arrogant sovereigns 
shall hear that there is no longer a king in France, 
bewildered, they will of themselves rush into the 
abyss left by the destruction of the throne of Saint 
Louis ! ” 

A Swiss now spoke somewhat in the following 


38 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


strain: “On our mountains, in our valleys, by our 
lakes,—our words are free as the winds and the waters. 
Let me say, then, that a great event is on the eve of 
arriving, and that to it the French monarchy may owe 
its regeneration. I have seen, great Master, a daughter 
of Maria Theresa travelling in state towards France, to 
unite the blood of seventeen Emperors with that of the 
successor of the sixty-one Kings of France, and the 
people rejoiced blindly, as they do when their chains 
are slackened or when they bow beneath a gilded yoke. 
I would infer, then, that the crisis is not yet come. 
My studies have convinced me of one truth—that the 
physiognomy of men reveals, to the eye which knows 
how to read it, their virtue and their vices. We may 
see a composed look or a smile: for these, caused by 
muscular movements, are in their power: but the great 
type of character is still imprinted legibly on the 
countenance, declaring what passes in the heart. The 
tiger can caress, can give a kindly look, but his low 
forehead, his projecting face, his great occiput, declare 
him tiger still. The dog growls, shows his teeth, but his 
honest eye, his intelligent face, declare him still to be the 
friend of man. God has imprinted on each creature’s 
face its name and nature. I have seen the young girl 
who is to reign in France : on her forehead I read the 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


39 


pride, the courage, the tenderness of the German 
maiden. I have seen the young man who is to he her 
husband: calmness, Christian meekness, and a high 
regard for the rights of others, characterize him. Now 
France, remembering no wrongs and forgetting no bene¬ 
fits, since a Charlemagne, a Louis, and a Henry have 
been sufficient to preserve on the throne twenty base 
and cruel kings—France who hopes on, despairs never— 
will she not adore a young, lovely, kindly queen—a 
patient, gentle, economical king ? And thi . too, after 
the disastrous reign of Louis NY., after his hateful 
orgies, his mean revenges, his Pompadours and 
Dubarrys ? Will not France bless her youthful 
sovereigns, who will bring to her as her dowry, peace 
with Europe ? Marie Antoinette now crosses the 
frontier ; the altar and the nuptial bed are prepared at 
Versailles. Is this the time to begin in France 
your work of regeneration? Pardon if I have dared 
to submit these thoughts to you, whose wisdom is 
infallible ! ” 


“ If you read physiognomy, illustrious brethren,” 
said Cagliostro, “ I read the future. Marie Antoinette 
is proud; she will interfere in the coming struggle, and 
will perish in it. Louis Augustus is mild; he will 


40 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


yield to it, and will perish with her ; but each will fall 
through opposite defects of character. Now they 
esteem each other, but short will he their love; in a 
year they will feel mutual contempt. Why then 
deliberate, brethren, to discover whence comes the 
light ? It is revealed to me. I come from the East, 
led, like the shepherds, by a star, which foretells a 
second regeneration of mankind. To-morrow I begin 
my work. Give me twenty years for it—that will be 
enough, if we are united and firm.” 

“ Twenty years ! ” murmured several voices. “ The 
time is long.” 

The Grand Copt turning to those who thus betrayed 
impatience, “ Yes,” said he, “it is long to those 
who think that a principle is destroyed as a man 
is killed with the dagger of Jacques Clement, or 
the knife of Damiens. Fools ! the knife kills the man, 
but, like the pruning-hook, it lops a branch that the 
other branches may take its place. Instead of the mur¬ 
dered king rises up a Louis XIII., a stupid tyrant; a 
Louis XIY., a cunning despot; a Louis XV., an idol 
whose path is wet with tears of blood, like the 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


41 


monstrous deities of India, crushing with changeless 
mien women and children, who cast garlands before 
their chariot-wheels. And you think twenty years too 
long to efface the name of king from the hearts of 
thirty millions of men, who but lately offered to Grod 
their children’s lives to purchase that of Louis XV. ! 
And you think it an easy task to make France hate her 
lilies, which, bright as the stars of heaven, grateful as 
the odours of flowers, have borne light, charity, victory 
—to the ends of the world ! Try, try, brethren ! I 
give you not twenty years—I give you a century. You 
scattered, trembling, unknown each to the other, known 
only to me, who only can sum up your divided worthy 
and tell its value—to me who alone can unite you in 
one fraternal chain—I tell you, philosophers, political 
economists, theorists, that in twenty years those 
thoughts which you whisper in your families, which 
you write with uneasy eye in the solitude of your old 
sombre towers, which you tell one another with the 
dagger in your hands, that you may strike the traitor 
who would repeat them in tones louder than your own— 
I tell you, that these thoughts shall be proclaimed aloud 
in the streets, printed in the open face of day, spread 
through Europe by peaceful emissaries, or by the 
bayonets of five hundred thousand soldiers, battling for 


42 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


liberty, with your principles inscribed on their standards. 
You who tremble at the name of the Tower of London; 
you who shrink at that of the prisons of the Inquisition, 
hear me—me, who am about to dare the Bastille! 1 

tell you, that we shall see those dreaded prisons in 
ruins, and your wives and children shall dance on their 
ashes. But that cannot be until, not the monarch,- but 
the monarchy, is dead—until religious domination is 
despised—until social inferiority is extinguished—until 
aristocratic castes and unjust division of lands are no 
more. I ask twenty years to destroy an old world, and 
make a new one—twenty years !—twenty seconds of 
eternity !—and you say it is too long ? ” 

How very similar to this are the harangues uttered in 
the present day by the “ followers of reason” and the 
advocates of universal equality, as though such a thing 
were possible. True, the people have at all times a 
right to a voice in the election of their rulers ; but these 
should not be “rulers of darkuess,” plotting and con¬ 
spiring in secret to overturn order and destroy the in¬ 
stitutions of a country. Politically, the mil of the 
people should be regarded as supreme, but only when it 
is free from the leading-strings of such politicians 
as Robespierre, Cagliostro et hoc genus omne; men 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


43 


who only seek the destruction of existing institutions in 
order to exalt themselves. 

It must not be supposed that because we read of these 
things as occurring in another country and in a by-gone 
century, that there are not men still in existence 
ready at any moment, if they had the power, to re-enact 
the horrors of the French Revolution. We have, perhaps, 
just now to deal with as much political quackery as at 
any period of our history, and with a host of pretenders 
who arc seeking to make capital out of the theories of 
political philosophers. As a rule, men who form their 
opinions from books, and elaborate them in the study, 
are not seldom dangerous—and the more honest in the 
expression of their theories, the more dangerous—as 
furnishing political knaves with instruments which they 
can wield to their own purposes. It was the philo¬ 
sophers and so-called followers of Reason that put ideas 
into the minds of the quack politicians who sought to 
rule and govern France, so long mis-ruled and mis¬ 
governed by an incompetent monarchy. Of coarse 
there must be a head of every State, and the successful 
government of that head will greatly depend upon the 
wisdom of its councillors ; who, recognizing the neces¬ 
sity of a national voice, should endeavour to educate the 


44 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


people, so that they may learn at least the two great 
principles of duty to God and man. The French people, 
blindly led by the impostors of the day, denied any 
duty to God, and only saw in their fellow-man the 
tyrant and oppressor of their race. 




CHAPTER III. 


Louis XV. at Metz, anil at Versailles Thirty Years later.—His 
Dread of Death.—His End.—Remarks of Carlyle, of Rous¬ 
seau.—Signal of the New Reign.—The Funeral.—Ill-starred 
Policy. 


ffJV?* T Metz, in 1744, when priests and people joined 
JfQjL in one general supplication for his recovery, 
Louis XV. appeared before the world as the benefactor 
of his race and regenerator of his country. After a 
subsequent thirty years of misrule and abject indolence, 
he was taken from Little Trianon, his rustic home, to 
his chateau at Versailles, again to occupy another sick¬ 
bed ; from which he was only removed to St. Denis, 
with no sound of mourning in the churches, or in the 
streets of Paris. The news of the King’s illness had 




46 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


been announced by official bulletins, but the people re¬ 
mained stoically indifferent. The only active mourners 
were Madame du Barry, and those who by her favour 
sat aloft in the sunshine of royalty. The Due 
d’Aiguillon, the great-nephew of Bichelieu—who, spite 
of his peculation in Brittany, was, through the influence 
of Madame du Barry and against the remonstrance of 
Parliament, appointed Commander of the King’s Light 
Cavalry—stood trembling and ready to fly to Gascony, 
should the King’s malady prove fatal. We must, there¬ 
fore, place him amongst the mourners at Versailles. 
Hear them was the stout-hearted Due de Choiscul, the 
only man of mark, who until recently had stood so 
high in. the King’s confidence. He had been dismissed, 
but not disgraced—his place in the Council of the State 
being occupied by the Chancellor, respecting whom 
the King had said, ‘ ‘ My Chancellor is a scoundrel, but 
I cannot do without him.” 

The King’s malady daily assumed a more dangerous 
character. The doctors began to look grave : ominous 
whisperings were heard through the court; and at last 
the bulletins announced that the royal patient was suf¬ 
fering from a severe attack of confluent small-pox. His 
Majesty always entertained a great dread of death, with 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


47 


just so much of religion in his character as to fear, 
without hope. As the end appeared to he drawing 
nearer, the King became importunate for the ministra¬ 
tion of the rites and consolations of the Church. Here a 
new difficulty presented itself. No priest could he 
found to receive his confession and grant absolution to 
the King. He was hurrying on to death without a part¬ 
ing benediction, and with him the long line of kings who 
had stood the wear and tear of so many centuries. At last 
on the evening of the 4th May, 1774, the King dismissed 
Madame du Barry * and sent for his confessor, Abbe 
Moudon; to whom, in the course of that night, he made 
confession; and by six o’clock on the following morn¬ 
ing the Cardinal Grand-Almoner of France stood by the 


* Madame du Barry, after the King’s death, was shut up in a 
Convent near Meaux. She was, however, subsequently released 
by Louis XVI. and allowed a pension, together with the use of the 
chateau at Luciennes, which Louis XV. had built for her. She 
made several vain attempts to obtain a recognition by the court, 
longing for the life of pleasure and frivolity she had left for ever. 
It is even hinted that she would have accepted a humble position 
in the service of Marie Antoinette, had such been possible to 
attain. The woman once so powerful passed away into retire¬ 
ment so profound that when the Revolution broke out, she was all 
but forgotten. 


48 


A. BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


royal pillow. The Host was elevated, and the Car¬ 
dinal administered the last sacrament of the Church 
to the dying King. This being concluded, the 
prelate turned round and declared to the bystanders, 
that his Majesty repented of any causes of scandal he 
might have given ; and purposed, with the strength of 
heaven assisting him, to avoid the like for the future. 

The King had no further opportunity vouchsafed to 
him of convincing the world of the sincerity of the re¬ 
pentance to which the Cardinal had referred. All 
that remained of Louis, the once well-beloved, but 
now the hated and despised, was a lifeless form of clay. 
Of him who had just departed Carlyle writes as 
follows :— u Louis would not suffer death to be spoken 
of; avoided the sight of churchyards, funeral monu¬ 
ments, and whatsoever could bring it to mind. It is 
the resource of the ostrich, who, hard hunted, sticks his 
foolish head in the ground, and would fain forget that 
his foolish, unseeing body is not unseen too. Or some¬ 
times, with a spasmodic antagonism, significant of the 
same thing, the King would go—or stopping his court 
carriages, would send into churchyards and ask, ‘ How 
many new graves there were to-day,’ though it gave his 
poor Pompadour the disagreeablest qualms when he did 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


49 


so. We can figure the thought of Louis, that day, 
when, all royally caparisoned for hunting, he met, at 
some sudden turning in the wood of Senart, a ragged 
peasant with a coffin : 


“ * For whom ? ’ inquired the King. It was for a poor 
brother slave, whom Majesty had sometimes noticed 
slaving in those quarters. ‘ What did he die of ? ’ 
1 Of hunger,’ was the brief reply ; on hearing which the 
King gave his steed the spur and hurried off. 

“ Pigure this same King’s thoughts when death is 
clutching at his own heart-strings; unlooked for, 
inexorable ! Yes, poor Louis, death has found thee. 
No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries, or 
gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial, could keep him out; 
but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will 
extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto 
was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a 
reality : sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a 
dream, into void immensity. Time is done, and all the 
scaffolding of time falls wrecked with hideous clangour 
round thy soul: the pale kingdoms yawn open ; there 
must thou enter, naked, all unking’d, and await what 


50 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


is appointed thee ! Unhappy man, there as thou 
turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a 
thought is thine. Purgatory and hell-fire, now all too 
possible, in the prospect: in the retrospect,—alas, what 
thing didst thou do that were not better undone; what 
mortal didst thou generously help; what sorrow hadst 
thou mercy on ? Do the five hundred thousand ghosts, 
who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from 
Rossbach to Quebec, that thy harlot might take revenge 
for an epigram, crowd round thee in this hour ? Thy 
foul harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy 
of daughters? Miserable man! Thou hadst done evil 
as thou couldst! Thy whole existence seems one 
hideous abortion and mistake of nature; the use and 
meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous 
Griffin, devouring the works of men; daily dragging 
virgins to thy cave ; clad also in scales that no spear 
would pierce: no spear but death’s ? A Griffin not 
fabulous but real ! Frightful, 0 Louis, seem these 
moments for thee. We will pry no further into the 
horrors of a sinner’s death-bed.” 


The last rites of the Church having been administered 
to the King, the door of his chamber was shut against 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


51 


all the royal family, under pretext of contagion: no one 
was allowed to enter there, hut religion—and death. 

The night having set in, all the citizens returned to 
Paris, patiently to await the coming dawn. Messieurs 
Rousseau and Marat sat upon a stone bench opposite the 
Palace at Versailles, looking stedfastly up to one of 
the windows, in which was burning a wax-candle in 
a little lantern—discoursing about the near approach 
of the King’s death and the probable result of such 
an event to the nation at large. Rousseau is speaking, 
and says: 

“ The death of a man is always a misfortune for some 
one, and the death of a king is frequently a great mis¬ 
fortune for all. Mark well this night, young man. 
Behold what clouds and tempests it hears on its murky 
bosom. The morning which will succeed it I shall 
witness no doubt, for I am not old enough to abandon 
hope of seeing the morrow ; hut a reign will commence 
on that morrow which you will see to its close, and 
which contains mysteries I cannot hope to be a 
spectator of. It is not, therefore, without interest that 
I watch yonder trembling flame, which is placed there 
as a signal to mark the duration of the King’s existence; 


52 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


a signal which Louis XY.’s successor devours with his 
eyes from behind some neighbouring curtain. This 
signal, which shall warn the ambitious of the dawn of a 
new reign, informs a poor philosopher like myself of the 
instant when the breath of the Almighty sweeps away, 
at the same moment, an age and a human existence.” 

“Ah! exclaimed Marat, pointing to the window, 
which had suddenly become shrouded in darkness, “the 
light has gone out; the King must be dead.” 

Suddenly a chariot, drawn by eight fiery horses, 
started at full gallop from the court-yard of the Palace, 
where all the grooms and equerries had been, during the 
night, hooted and spurred, waiting for some signal to 
escape from the house of pestilence. The chariot contained 
the Dauphin, Marie Antoinette, and Madame Elizabeth, 
the sister of the late King. The sky was overcast, 
and the rain literally descended in torrents, mid peals 
of thunder and flashes of lightning, which must have 
reminded them of that fearful wedding-night four years 
ago. In this condition they entered Paris. The whole 
court rushed to salute the new Sovereigns. “Hail to 
your Majesties ! ” “ The Dauphin and Dauphiness arc 

King and Queen!” Overpowered with many emotions, 







* 








































































































































A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


53 


they fell on their knees together, and with streaming 
eyes exclaimed: “0 God! guide ns and protect ns: 
we are too young to reign.” A prayer which time, alas! 
proved to have been hut too prophetic. 

The funeral obsequies of the late King occupied the 
first attention of the new one. The formality of court 
mourning had to he gone through; hut they hurried poor 
Louis underground, in a most impatient way, on the 
second day after his death—his funeral appearing to have 
been conducted pretty much in the same fashion as 
Hood describes the pauper’s of his day to have been. 
Substituting a king for a peasant, the same couplet 
would not inaptly describe the indecorous haste of the 
royal funeral :— 

Rattle his bones over the stones, 

He is only a King whom nobody owns. 

A custom prevailed in Trance for the people, on the 
death of a king, to pay a tax to the new monarch. On 
the accession of Louis XYI. the national finances were 
in a very exhausted state : commerce was nearly ruined, 
the navy dismantled, the debt enormous, and a 
general famine seemed inevitable. Under these com- 


54 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


bined conditions of distress the first acts of the new 
King added greatly to his popularity. He declined, on 
behalf of the Queen and himself, to accept the cus¬ 
tomary tax, and, in the formation of his cabinet, 
succeeded in attaching to him men of honest and at 
the same time liberal principles. The Parliament 
was recalled, and affairs began to assume a more 
favourable aspect. Unfortunately a feeling of jealous 
hostility towards England induced the Government of 
France to identify themselves with the Americans, 
and to assist them in throwing off their allegiance 
to the mother country. The result of this policy 
was a great misfortune to France, adding the cost 
and miseries of a prolonged war with a neighbour¬ 
ing Power to those burdens which had already grown 
intolerable. 

The national bankruptcy in France, brought on by 
the assistance given to the Americans, was no doubt the 
principal cause of plunging that unhappy country into 
a revolution still more bloody. The change observed 
in the court by the removal of Louis XV. and his 
favourite—the substitution of a young, docile, and well- 
intentioned king, united to a queen, young, beautiful, 
and generous, who four years before had received a 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


55 


people’s homage—the substitution of honest Ministers 
instead of profligate abbes—all gave promise of a golden 
age, a re-union of parties, and the cementing together, in 
the bonds of common interest of the three great institu¬ 
tions of the State—the King, Church, and People. 
The purifying effects of virtue substituted for vice 
tended greatly to raise the tone and aspirations of the 
general public. Even the philosophers could find plea¬ 
sure in returning to the society of Paris, and joined in 
the congratulatory addresses which poured in from 
every quarter. 

The Queen for a short time moved in majestic splen¬ 
dour, her countenance beaming with joy; and, as though 
to crown her happiness, she became, after seven 
years of anxious expectation, the mother of a princess : 
—to be followed in due course by a son. The birth of 
another Dauphin gave cause for universal rejoicing. 
Alas! the son thus cradled in love and splendour, was 
ere long to find a dungeon for his nursery, a cobbler for 
his tutor, and a dose of poison for his requiem. 

“A year had come and gone,” observes Carlyle, “since 
Louis the XY.’s death: there have been masquerades, 
private theatricals, balls, and snow-statues raised for 


56 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


the benefit of the poor during the hard winter. Still 
the heart of the struggling masses throughout France, 
during the year 1775, is rapidly giving way under the 
weight of sorrow and privation which they have been 
called upon to bear. They continue to struggle on, 
their hearts cheerless, their diet thin and poor. For 
them there appears little hope in this world, their faith 
is fast failing : and untaught, uncomforted, and unfed, 
they are sinking into despair. The corn-laws have been 
altered, but there is a great dearth of grain, and every¬ 
where a scarcity of bread.” 


On the 2nd May, 1775, multitudes made their way 
to Versailles;—their sallow faces and ragged squalor 
presenting a petition of their grievances, traced as it 
were in human blood. The King showed himself on 
the balcony, and beheld their wretchedness. He spoke 
softly to them, and they fain had hoped that the 
prayers and tears of their little ones depicted in their 
haggard faces were heard and would be answered. 
Answered indeed they were: forbeingregardedasalawless 
rabble, two of their ringleaders were seized and hanged, 
and the crowd driven back to their dens and hovels. 
A handwriting on the wall, this pathetic appeal of a 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


57 


starving people should have foreshadowed the meaning 
of coming events, had there been, not a prophet, hut 
a Minister of ordinary foresight, to inteipret its mean¬ 
ing. Surely such an assembly was but a representation 
of millions of people, fashioned in God’s image, whose 
inheritance it was to partake of the fruits of the earth 
by the sweat of their brow. 

Old Marquis Mirabeau looked on the assembled multi¬ 
tude from his lodgings at the Eaths of Mont d’Or, and 
thus soliloquized :—“You know not what it is you are 
stripping barer, or, as you call it, governing; what, by 
the spurt of your pen, in its cold dastard indifference, 
you will fancy you can starve always with impunity ; 
always till the catastrophe come ! Such government of 
blindman’s-buff, stumbling along too far, will end in 
the general overturn.” 

We have already remarked that the assistance ren¬ 
dered to the Americans during their revolt against 
England was an important cause in bringing about those 
financial difficulties in Erance which resulted in the 
Great Revolution. Moreover, we read that on August 
5th, 1785, a most terrific storm occurred which laid 
waste 131 entire villages, destroying at once all the 


58 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


produce of the country through which it passed. This, 
of course, tended greatly to raise the price of all kinds of 
food, for which thousands had already been vainly 
clamouring at Versailles. 

AVe have little doubt our readers will agree with us 
that all these conditions were exceedingly favourable 
for the production and growth of Shams; and accord¬ 
ingly we find that they flourished at the time we have 
described in great numbers, in almost all the depart¬ 
ments of human affairs; but we will only take the 
liberty of presenting to the public one or two full- 
fledged specimens. 



CHAPTER IV. 


Dr. Frederick Antony Mesmer.—His Connection with Father 
Hell.—Mesmer’s Visit to Paris and Reception there.—His 
Reputed Scientific Discovery.—Appointment of a Commission 
to Investigate it.—The Society of Mesmerists.—Object of 
Mesmerism.—Some of the Facts of Animal Magnetism.—A 
Second Commission.—Story of Prince Talleyrand. 

ejVp T such a time and in such a France appeared Dr. 
JjrQiL Frederick Antony Mesmer, who by his preten¬ 
sions soon placed himself at the head of the Shams of his 
day. The system he introduced played an important 
part in subsequent events, especially in connection with 
that great lie of the eighteenth century, the affair of 
the Diamond Necklace. All men are free to select the 



60 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


road on which to travel life’s journey, and Mesmer, 
like so many others, chose that which ended in rain 
and disgrace. 

He was born in the little Prussian town of Marsberg 
in the year 1734, and showed himself too much of a 
quack ever to he regarded as a man of science. He 
studied medicine at the University of Yienna, where he 
took the degree of Doctor. He first attracted attention 
as the author of an essay on “The Influence of the 
Heavenly Bodies upon the Human Frame;” subse¬ 
quently he appears in connection with Father Hell, 
who was at the time an assistant in the Jesuits’ 
Observatory at Yienna. This Reverend Father was 
evidently a man of some mark, for in 1751 he was made 
Professor of Mathematics in Transylvania; and on his 
return to Yienna some years afterwards, he became the 
head of the Observatory in that city, which was erected 
.after his own design. He travelled in Lapland, where 
he succeeded in making some important observations 
upon the transit of Yenus across the Sun’s disc, and 
died in 1792, having published several valuable works 
on Mathematics and Astronomy, many of which still 
survive as works of reference. Father Hell engaged 
with Mesmer in a series of attempts to cure disease by 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


61 


means of the loadstone. They profess to have attained 
great success; hut, like the thieves in Scripture, “they 
fell out by the way,” and a violent controversy ensued 
between them. Hell wrote a work in which he 
assigned to Mesmer only the part of a humble instru¬ 
ment in the carrying out of his experiments. Mesmer, 
on the other hand, claimed for himself the distinction of 
being the originator of the system. The scientific men 
of Vienna sided with Hell, and Mesmer was obliged to 
quit the city branded as an impostor. On quitting 
Vienna, he travelled through several parts of Germany 
and Switzerland, everywhere pretending to work 
wonderful cures. After his exposure by Hell, and 
being driven out of Vienna condemned as a quack, 
he no longer made use of the loadstone, but professed 
to operate through the electrical agency of his own 
body. To this process he gave the name of “Animal 
Magnetism.” 

In 1778 Mesmer visited Paris, where he speedily be¬ 
came the most popular professor of the healing art. 
Thousands of people, from the peer to the peasant, flocked 
to his apartments for the purpose of being “ Mesmer¬ 
ized.” So great was his success, that he excited the 
rivalry of a French physician, M. Deslon, who embraced 


62 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


his doctrines, and practised them with such success as to 
gain 100,000/. in fees from his patients. Mesmer find¬ 
ing the competition of M. Deslon too keen for him, 
applied to the French Government for a chateau and 
annuity, with permission to prosecute his studies in 
retirement. His application being refused, he left 
Paris for Spa, where he was followed by many wealthy 
patients. Whilst at Spa a subscription was set on foot, 
and the sum of 14,000/. subscribed for him; with this 
sum he returned to Paris, again to push his fortunes. 
He incurred some little disgrace by the exposure of his 
alleged cure of Mademoiselle Paradis, a celebrated 
popular singer, who was suffering from a convulsive 
affection of the eyes, and whom he falsely pretended to 
have cured. He solicited the Royal Society of England 
and other learned bodies to investigate his reputed 
scientific discovery. At last the French Government 
appointed a Commission, consisting of the most eminent 
scientific men of the day, to investigate and report upon 
the scientific claims of Mesmer and his new system. 
They reported that the so-called science of Animal 
Magnetism had no existence, except in the imagination 
of the operator and those operated upon; that Mesmer 
was a sham and impostor. This decision sent him 
once more a wanderer from Paris, after which he never 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


63 


seems to have rallied from his disgrace, but to have 
passed the remainder of his life in obscurity. 

The system introduced by Mesmer was not so soon 
disposed of. He succeeded in making many converts 
in France, and indeed in almost every other country in 
Europe, and among them some honest-minded searchers 
after truth. Others, like Cagliostro, heaped contempt 
upon the system, and the quackish pretensions founded 
upon it. 

In spite of the adverse opinion expressed by the 
scientific men of his day upon Animal Magnetism, 
Mesmer succeeded in obtaining a large class of pupils 
whom he professed to instruct in the art of mesmerizing, 
and these established what was called the Society of 
Mesmerists. To the members of that society, rather 
than to Mesmer, may he attributed the fact that the 
subject of Animal Magnetism still continues to engage 
attention, without sinking hack into oblivion like so 
many other marvels which every now and then spring 
up to blind the imagination whilst they confound the 
understanding. 

Mesmerism sought to elevate man’s reason to an 
equality with Grod, and to place the soul and body of 


61 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


one individual under the control of the will of another. 
Further than this, it professed, through the medium of 
an individual, to possess the power of prophetic divina¬ 
tion. This faculty of Second-sight was not professed by 
Mesmer, hut it formed one of the chief grounds upon 
which subsequent believers in Animal Magnetism based 
their claims to be regarded as men of science. They 
asserted that they possessed new and important powers 
in the cure of disease, the annihilation of pain, the 
prophetic interpretation of events, the absolute control 
over the wills and actions of others, and, lastly, in our 
day, of direct communication with departed spirits. 

We cease to wonder when we consider the condition 
of public opinion in France, and indeed throughout the 
whole of Europe at the time Mesmer made his appear¬ 
ance, that his extravagant pretensions should have 
obtained a large number of followers. The doctrines 
propounded by him and his disciples exactly suited the 
views of a people almost wholly given over to blind 
superstitions, or the shallowest infidelity. 

We need not stop to make any further minute inquiry 
respecting the personal history of Mesmer. It is suffi¬ 
cient to know that he retired, as we have said, into 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


65 


obscurity and adopted an assumed name, so that the 
precise place and date of his death are unknown, 
although it is probable that he died at Baden some 
time in 1815. 


After this brief description of Mesmer, we propose to 
direct attention to some of the facts relating to Animal 
Magnetism. In doing so we include only those that 
have been observed and recorded by men upon whose 
integrity we can place reliance. Mesmer’s method of 
operating upon his patients was so absurd that none 
but a Sham could have devised it. It was as follows : 
The persons to be operated upon were placed in a room, 
heated and perfumed to such a degree as to produce a 
feeling of somnolence, which was still further increased 
by the soft plaintive notes of an organ kept constantly 
playing. Each person had hold of an iron rod passed 
through a tub of water, and rounded off to a point. 
In this position the patients were detained, sometimes 
for three or four hours, until a feeling of languid torpor 
stole over them. At the right moment it was Mesmer’s 
custom to rush through the room, applying a magnetic 
wand to the rod which each patient hold in his hand; 
light and air being suddenly admitted into the room 


E 


66 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


and the organ striking up the liveliest music at the 
same time. 

It is not to he wondered at that under such treat¬ 
ment the patients experienced an unusual sensation; 
hut surely there was no science in such a proceeding; 
unless, as Mr. Earnum says, “ Humbug” is worthy of 
such a designation. 

Many of the phenomena produced by Mesmerism are 
due entirely to the condition of the person operated 
upon, apart altogether from any virtue given forth from 
the operator. The precise condition of the nervous 
system of persons in whom such phenomena have been 
observed, does not admit of explanation without travel¬ 
ling too far into the region of speculation to suit our 
present purpose. If you tell a person that by looking 
intently at an object, and following the particular 
motions of the operator, he will pass into the condition 
of Mesmeric sleep in a given time, the result expected 
may follow in certain cases. Whilst in this con¬ 
dition, it is maintained by some that the patient is 
completely under the control of the operator—that if he 
touches one bump on his head he will begin to laugh— 
another, to cry—another, to sing or play—although in 
the unmespierized state he was incapable of doing 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


67 


either. The following extract from the Report furnished 
by the Commission appointed by the King of Prance to 
investigate the claims of Mesmer and Animal Mag¬ 
netism would seem absolutely fatal to any such preten¬ 
sions :—“ On blindfolding those who seemed to be most 
susceptible to the influence of this agent, all its ordinary 
effects were produced, although nothing was done to 
them, when they imagined they were being magnetized; 
while none of its effects were produced when they were 
really being magnetized, but imagined that nothing was 
being done to them. When brought under a magnetized 
tree, one of Mesmer’s modes of operating, nothing hap¬ 
pened if the subjects of the experiment thought they 
were at a distance from the tree; while they were 
immediately thrown into convulsions if they believed 
they were near the tree, although really at a distance 
from it. The effects produced were, consequently, 
purely the result of imagination.” 

This opinion cannot but be regarded as impartial, 
when we consider the men who formed the Commission. 
They were Benjamin Pranklin, Levoi, Bailly, De Borg, 
and Lavoisier, Drs. Majault, Sallin, Larcet, and Guillo- 
tin. But whether they would have arrived at the same 
conclusion had it not been for the enormous pretensions 


68 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


of Mesmer, may be a question open to considerable 
doubt. 

In the year 1827 a second Commission was appointed, 
which, after sitting five years, was dissolved without 
agreeing upon a verdict. This second Commission did 
not confine their investigation to the pretensions of 
Mesmer only, but included in it the kindred subjects of 
Somnambulism, Clairvoyance, or Double-sight. They 
concluded their Eeport by stating: “¥e think we have 
communicated in our report facts of sufficient importance 
to encourage the investigations into the subject of 
Animal Magnetism, as a very curious branch of natural 
science.” Undoubtedly this was a much more encou¬ 
raging report for Mesmerists than the one previously 
made : nevertheless, since its publication Animal Mag¬ 
netism has fallen considerably in public estimation, 
owing in a great measure to the practice of it having 
been almost wholly resorted to by charlatans of the 
lowest kinds. 

On the subject of Animal Magnetism, the following 
story was once told by Prince Talleyrand: “ I remem¬ 
ber,” he said, “ upon one occasion having been gifted 
for one single instant with this unknown and nameless 
power. I know not, to this moment, whence it came, 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


69 


it has never once returned; and yet, upon that one 
occasion, it saved my life: without that sudden and 
mysterious inspiration, I should not now he here to tell 
the tale. I had freighted a ship in concert with my 
friend Beaumetz. He was a good fellow, with whom 
I had ever lived on the most intimate terms; and in 
those stormy times, when it needed not only friendship 
to bind men together, hut almost godlike courage to 
dare to show that friendship, I could not hut prize most 
highly all his hold and loyal demonstrations of kindness 
and attachment to me. I had not a single reason to 
douht his friendship; on the contrary, he had given me, 
on several occasions, most positive proofs of his sincere 
devotion to my interests and well-being. 

“We had fled from France together, we had arrived 
at Hew York together, and together we had lived in 
perfect harmony during our stay there. So, after 
having resolved upon improving the little money that 
was left us by speculation, it was still in partnership 
and together that we freighted a small vessel for India, 
trusting all to the goodly chance which had befriended 
us in our escape from danger and from death, to venture 
once more together to brave the storms and perils of a 
yet longer and more adventurous voyage. 


70 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


“ Everything was embarked for our departure; bills 
were all paid and farewells all taken, and we were 
waiting for a fair wind with most eager expectation— 
being prepared to embark at any hour of the day or 
night in obedience to the warning of the captain. This 
state of uncertainty seemed to irritate the temper of 
poor Beaumetz to an extraordinary degree, and, unable 
to remain quietly at home, be hurried to and from the 
city, with an eager, restless activity which at times 
excited my astonishment, for he had ever been remark¬ 
able for great calmness and placidity of temper. 

“ One day, he entered our lodging, evidently labour¬ 
ing under great excitement, although commanding him¬ 
self to appear calm. I was engaged at the moment 
writing letters to Europe, and, looking over my 
shoulder, he said, with forced gaiety, ‘ What need to 
waste time in penning those letters ? They will never 
reach their destination. Come with me, and let us take 
a turn on the Battery ; perhaps the wind may be chop¬ 
ping round; we may he nearer our departure than we 
imagine.’ 

“ The day was fine, although the wind was blowing 
hard, and I suffered myself to he persuaded. Beaumetz, 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


71 


I remembered afterwards, displayed an unusual officious- 
ness in aiding me to close my desk and put away my 
papers, banding me, with hurried eagerness, my hat 
and cane, and doing other little services to quicken my 
departure, which at the time I attributed to the restless 
desire for change, the love of activity, with which he 
seemed to have been devoured during the whole period 
of our delay. We walked through the crowded streets 
to the Battery. He had seized my arm, and hurried 
me along, seemingly in eager haste to advance. When 
we had arrived on the broad Esplanade—the glory then, 
as now, of the city of New York, Beaumetz quickened 
his step yet more, until he arrived close to the water’s 
edge. He talked loud and quickly, admiring in ener¬ 
getic terms the beauty of the scenery, Brooklyn 
heights, the shady groves of the Island, the ships riding 
at anchor, and the busy scene on the wharf;— 
when suddenly he paused in his mad incoherent dis¬ 
course, for I had freed my arm from his grasp, and 
stood immovable before him. Staying his wild and 
rapid steps, I fixed my eyes upon his face. He turned 
aside, cowed and dismayed. ‘Beaumetz,’ I shouted, 

‘ you mean to murder me, you intend to throw me from 
this height into the sea below. Deny it, monster, if 
you can! ’ 


72 


A. BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


“He stammered a few incoherent words, and strove 
to pass me, but I barred his passage with extended 
arms. He looked vacantly right and left, and then 
flung himself upon my neck, and burst into tears. 
‘ ’Tis true—'tis true, my friend. The thought has 
haunted me day and night, like a flash from the lurid 
fire of hell. It was for this I brought you here. Look, 
you stand within a foot of the edge of the parapet—in 
another instant the work would have been done ! ” 

“ What,” inquired his companion, “ was the motive 
of your first suspicion of the murderous intent of Beau- 
metz ? ” 

“ I know not to this very hour,” replied the Prince 
de Talleyrand; “it was not his eye, for I was not look¬ 
ing at him at the moment: I was gazing at the sublime 
view which he himself was pointing out to my notice ; 
—it was not in the tone of his voice either, in which 
lay the warning of my danger; it was a sudden and 
mysterious impulse, for which I have never been able 
to account—one of those startling and fearful mysteries 
which even the strongest minds are contented to accept 
without inquiry, being satisfied that such things are, 
and never daring to ask wherefore. Many persons, the 
Illumines , for example, who ruled the monde philoso- 



































































A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


73 


phique for so long a period, have ascribed this sudden 
revelation of the hidden Truth entirely to the effects of 
Magnetism; and there are instances well known, where¬ 
in the great masters of the art have been able to pro¬ 
duce the same effect at pleasure. Cagliostro, to whom 
I once mentioned the circumstance, said he had often 
obtained the same results by his wonderful powers of 
Animal Magnetism.” 

We would call our readers’ attention to one or two of 
the circumstances of this story—supposing it to be true. 
A madman walking with Prince Talleyrand takes it 
into his head to fling the Prince into the sea, and one 
of the wiliest men the world ever saw penetrates the 
madman’s design. Surely there was nothing so very 
wonderful in this. All the dramatic apparatus of the 
story goes for nothing, inasmuch as it is evidently meant 
for effect. That there are men, neither prophets nor 
apostles, who have had intuitions—sudden and instan¬ 
taneous glimpses into their own futurity—yet, never¬ 
theless, not recognizing them as intuitions until that 
futurity had passed by and the events had happened as 
foreshadowed—a personal apocalypse in fact—we may 
credit: but surely it is easy enough to account for such 
things, if we can only believe in a Divine Euler of the 


74 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


Universe, who may naturally be supposed to take con¬ 
siderable interest in the affairs of his creatures, 
without going all the way, like Talleyrand, to the 
magnetism of the Illuminati or the divinations of the 
Quacks. In the following chapter we shall pursue 
this subject further. 



CHAPTER Y. 


—O— 


Presentiments.—Reverie and Abstraction.—Glimpses of the 
Future.—Mesmer a Quack.—Magnetism.—Story of a Captain 
of Marines.—Spectral Illusions.—Instance mentioned by Sir 
Walter Scott.—The Percy Lion.—The Roue’s Spectre.— 
Another Case related by Dr. Gregory. 


now proceed to relate some curious cases 
of moral delusions, with which in their 
varying forms medical men are more or less familiar. 
We do not say that they did not happen; but we 
say that they were delusions nevertheless : and we 
relate them here because the charlatans have made 
them the basis of so-called sciences as visionary 
and fantastic as the delusions themselves. But here 








76 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


we only assert what we have good reason to 
believe is a fact, that the men and women who lead 
intrinsically pure and moral lives, are usually free from 
such nightmare visions of the mind : and that in some 
cases there is hardly any limit to the number of the 
weird phantoms to he found in those frightful vaults— 
the chambers of an immoral soul. Upon these 
mysterious phenomena—for which it is useless to pre¬ 
tend that medical men can account any more than for 
some of the mysterious phenomena of the heavens—the 
Shams have built up Mesmerism and Spiritualism— 
both of which we regard as utterly absurd in them¬ 
selves. But we relate these cases for what they are 
worth, and our readers will please to recollect that we 
relate them in our “Book of Shams.” 

Presentiments, for instance, have taken possession of 
people and been remarkably verified by subsequent 
experience. A whole book might easily be written 
about Presentiments, but the following case occurred so 
immediately under our own observation, and was 
attended by such a melancholy result, that it is worthy 
of being placed on record. A. gentleman whose busi¬ 
ness required him occasionally to cross over to America, 
was preparing for one of his accustomed journeys. He 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


77 


was of a lively, sanguine temperament, and had fre¬ 
quently performed the same voyage without expressing 
the slightest feeling of apprehension or alarm. On the 
particular occasion to which we refer, he was standing on 
the steps of a friend’s house taking leave of him. All 
at once his voice faltered, and he appeared confused. 
The friend with whom he was talking, perceiving the 
change in his manner, drew him back into the house 
and inquired the cause of the sudden alarm which was 
depicted on his countenance. He exclaimed : “I shall 
never see you again!” As he was engaged to be 
married on his return to England, his friend tried to 
rally him by accusing him of being love-sick. To all 
such attempts he made the following reply :—“ Just as 
I was speaking to you, I saw as visibly as though it 
was passing before my very eyes, the ship in which I 
am to sail sink under water, and every soul on board 
perish.” Ho argument that the anxiety of friends 
could suggest had any effect in shaking his convic¬ 
tion, that the scene which thus so vividly passed 
in view before him would be verified. He became 
much depressed in spirits, and in consequence some 
friends accompanied him to Liverpool, hoping that 
the excitement attending his departure might have an 
effect in rousing him from what they regarded as a 


78 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


state of morbid sentimentality. Ho such result, how¬ 
ever, followed; and it was suggested that if the convic¬ 
tion was so strong upon him, he had better postpone his 
journey. He admitted that he would very much like 
to do so, and even went so far as to express a wish that 
some illness or unavoidable circumstance might detain 
him in England. At the same time that he expressed 
himself in so decided a manner, he said: “I have a 
feeling which impels me to undertake this journey, and 
it seems to overpower the dread I feel at taking it.” 
At last he set sail, and had a very prosperous voyage. 
Having completed his business in Hew York, he was 
preparing for his homeward voyage in the best possible 
spirits. Previous to leaving America he formed the 
idea of going down South on a short visit to an 
old acquaintance, and took his passage on board one of 
the floating hotels, which are constantly descending the 
Mississippi. Before he had been twelve hours on board 
the steamer, she struck upon a rock in the river, and 
rapidly filling with water, sank to the bottom. 
Amongst those who perished was our unfortunate 
friend. 

As we before said, we do not pretend to offer any ex¬ 
planation, or to suggest any theory to account for occur- 




A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


79 


rences so mysterious. Such cases, however, are more 
or less familiar to most people, the charlatans being 
always ready to use them for their own purposes—pre¬ 
tending that by means of Animal Magnetism the mystery 
is made clear, and that similar events may he foretold 
by the aid of a medium ! 

Some people are occasionally subject to reverie or 
abstraction ; others, no doubt by a process akin to 
inspiration, can and do have momentary glimpses of 
the future; which may result from strong internal or 
external suggestions, but what these suggestions spring 
from is beyond our present power to comprehend: we 
can only recognize their existence; and whilst admitting 
facts, it behoves us to be careful to guard against 
embracing the crude theories which the Shams have 
built upon the scanty material at their command. 

Whatever may be the amount of imposition practised 
by Mesmerists, Spiritualists, and Media of all kinds, the 
conditions of Somnambulism, Catalepsy, and Trance are, 
to a great extent, free from such objections. Doubtless 
the phenomena observed in each of these cases admit 
of being classed together, and will some day or other, 
no doubt, be found to depend upon the same cause 


80 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


or causes. It seems desirable that ere long another 
Commission should be appointed to collect the ascer¬ 
tained facts relating to each of the three last-named 
phenomena, and, if possible, either to assign them a 
place among the existing sciences, or, if necessaiy, 
originate a new department and class them under it. 

That Mesmer was a Sham there can, we think, be no 
doubt. He made use of the power he possessed in his 
strong nervous system to paralyze as it were for a 
time the weaker nervous power of those he operated 
upon. In the same way, by fastening a steadfast 
gaze upon a wild animal and fixing it immovably, 
the force of the strong brain of the man will in 
time subdue the ferocity of the beast. But there 
must be a difference in the amount of nervous power 
between the operator and the person operated upon 
to produce this effect. Indeed, we know by experi¬ 
ment that the difference between the condition of 
our bodies when exhausted by long-continued fatigue, 
and when exhilarated by sleep, is not due to any¬ 
thing imported into the system, but to a changed 
electrical state of the nerves. Sleep appears to 
be the appointed means for maintaining the natural 
equilibrium of the vital powers. If, then, one person 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


81 


may be said to be in a negative condition and tbe 
other in a positive, no doubt the one might throw 
the other into a magnetic sleep. It, however, requires 
that these two conditions should exist in the two 
persons for any result to follow. This has been illus¬ 
trated and advanced as an explanation of the power 
which attracts people together. Out of a large con¬ 
course of people, two will be attracted to each other by 
a force which neither reason nor will has had any¬ 
thing to do with in producing. What can that force 
be, unless, for the want of a better theory, we assume it 
to depend upon a difference in the magnetic condition 
of the two bodies? We never find that a weak, feeble 
person can mesmerize a strong one, let him attempt it 
under any conditions whatever. 

It is of great importance to the success of a Sham 
that he should, by hard talking and constant lying, be 
able to befool himself into a belief in his own powers 
while he seeks to dupe others. If a man has, by con¬ 
stant practice, talked himself into the belief of a thing, 
he has at least half succeeded in impressing others with 
the same belief. 

We once knew an officer, who by constantly telling 
the same tale, succeeded in talking himself into a 


82 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


belief that he, instead of his friend, was the hero 
of the story. It related to an event which took 
place at the storming of Badajos under the Duke of 
Wellington in 1812 , at which siege a brother officer of 
our captain’s was engaged. It so happened that on the 
night before the battle something led him to examine a 
package recently received from England, in which was 
a small Bible; which he at once put into his pocket, 
intending to reserve the consideration of it for a 
“more convenient season.” On the following day, 
whilst leading his company into action, he was struck 
by a musket-ball, which was, however, prevented 
entering his breast by the resistance afforded by the 
Bible in his pocket. This incident, together with what 
might be regarded as the romance of the siege, all 
went to make up a very pretty after-dinner story; 
which our captain of Marines was always reproducing 
and from time to time making sundry additions to it, 
until at length he began to tell the tale as a circum¬ 
stance which had actually occurred to himself. By 
long practice in the same direction, he appeared to talk 
himself into a belief that what he was saying, was per¬ 
fectly true, although everybody positively knew that he 
was quartered at Woolwich at the time, and never away 
from garrison. 


A. BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


83 


We read of a great many remarkable instances of 
spectral illusion, but none more so than that which took 
possession of Cardinal de Rohan. He was not mad, but 
his brain was diseased—haunted by the ever-present 
vision of Marie Antoinette, whom he fancied he beheld 
smiling upon him and reciprocating the passion which 
was befooling his better jugdment. Some will, no 
doubt, be ready to exclaim that he was not so much a 
fool as a wicked, licentious priest, who sought to dis¬ 
honour one of the first ladies in Europe. Eor our own 
part, we think he was labouring under a sort of spectral 
illusion, which, as in the case of a monomaniac, whilst 
it left him in perfect possession of his intellect and 
reason upon eveiy other subject, deprived him of the 
power of reasoning himself out of the fatal delusion with 
which he was haunted, and which was no doubt fed by 
Cagliostro and Lamotte, and the other impostors among 
whom he was entangled. 

Sir Walter Scott mentions an instance where the 
spectral illusion, though of a totally different kind to 
the Cardinal’s, did, nevertheless, take such powerful pos¬ 
session of its victim as to lead to a fatal termination. 
The case occurred in the practice of the late Hr. 
Gregory of Edinburgh, the patient being a gentleman 


84 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


of very high position in that city as a lawyer, who was 
entrusted with the property and private interests of a 
large class of influential clients, and whose conduct 
was, as a natural consequence, open to public observa¬ 
tion and criticism. This lawyer bore the reputation of 
being a man of good moral character, sound sense, 
and unimpeachable integrity. At the time when Dr. 
Gregory first visited him, he was confined principally to 
his sick-room, sometimes to his bed, yet occasionally 
attending to business, and devoting his mind, apparently 
with all its usual strength and energy, to the conduct 
of the more important affairs entrusted to him; nor 
did there, to a superficial observer, appear anything in 
his manner, while so engaged, that could argue vacilla¬ 
tion of intellect or depression of mind. His outward 
symptoms of malady indicated no acute or alarming 
disease; hut slowness of pulse, absence of appetite, 
difficulty of digestion, and constant depression of spirits, 
seemed to draw their origin from some hidden cause, 
which the patient was determined to conceal. The 
deep gloom of the unfortunate gentleman—the embar¬ 
rassment which he could not hide from his friendly 
physician—the briefness and obvious constraint with 
which he answered the interrogations of his medical 
adviser, induced Dr. Gregory to take other methods 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


85 


for prosecuting his inquiries. He applied to the suf¬ 
ferer’s family, to learn, if possible, the source of 
that secret grief which was afflicting his unfortunate 
patient. The persons applied to, after conversing toge¬ 
ther previously, denied all knowledge of any cause for 
the burden which obviously affected their relative. So 
far as they knew—and they thought they could hardly 
be deceived—his worldly affairs were prosperous; no 
family loss had occurred which could be followed with 
such persevering distress; no entanglements of affection 
could be supposed to apply to his age, and no sensation 
of severe remorse could be consistent with his character. 
The medical gentleman had finally recourse to serious 
argument with the invalid himself, and urged on him 
the folly of devoting himself to a lingering and melan¬ 
choly death, rather than tell the subject of affliction 
which was thus wasting him. He specially pressed 
upon him the injury which he was doing to his own 
character, by suffering it to be inferred that the secret 
cause of his dejection, and its consequences, was some¬ 
thing too scandalous or flagitious to be made known, 
bequeathing in this manner to his family a suspected 
and dishonoured name, arid leaving a memory with 
which might be associated the idea of guilt, which the 
criminal had died without confessing. The patient, 


86 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


more moved by this species of appeal than by any which 
had as yet been urged, expressed his desire to speak out 
frankly to the doctor. Every one else was removed, 
and the door of the sick-room made secure; when he 
began his confession in the following manner :— 

“ You cannot, my dear friend, be more conscious than 
I, that I am in the course of dying under the oppression 
of the fatal disease which consumes my vital powers; 
but neither can you understand the nature of my com¬ 
plaint, and the manner in which it acts upon me, nor, 
if you did, I fear, could your zeal and skill avail to 
rid me of it.” 

“It is possible,” said the physician, “ that my skill 
may not equal my wish of serving you; yet medical 
science has many resources, of which those unacquainted 
with its powers never can form an estimate. But until 
you plainly tell me the symptoms of your complaint, 
it is impossible for either of us to say what may or tnav 
not be in my power, or within that of medicine.” 

“I may answer you,” replied the patient, “that my 
case is not a singular one, since we read of it in the 
famous novel of Le Sage: You remember, doubtless, 
the disease of which the Duke D’Olivarez is there stated 
to have died ? ” 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


87 


“ Of the idea,” answered the medical gentleman, 
“that he was haunted by an apparition, to the actual 
existence of which he gave no credit: bnt died, never¬ 
theless, because he was overcome and heart-broken by 
its imaginary presence.” 

“ I, my dearest doctor,” said the sick man, “ am in 
that very case; and so painful and abhorrent is the 
presence of the persecuting vision, that my reason is 
totally inadequate to combat the effects of my morbid 
imagination, and I am sensible I am dying, a wasted 
victim to an imaginary disease.” 

The medical gentleman listened with anxiety to his 
patient’s statement, and, for the time, judiciously 
avoiding any contradiction of the sick man’s precon¬ 
ceived fancy, contented himself with more minute 
inquiry into the nature of the apparition with which he 
conceived himself haunted, and into the history of the 
mode by which so singular a disease had made itself 
master of his imagination, secured, as it seemed, by 
strong powers of the understanding, against so irregular 
an attack. The sick person replied by stating, 
that its advances were gradual, and at first not of a 
terrible or even disagreeble character. To illustrate 


88 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


this, he gave the following account of the progress 
of his disease :— 

“ My visions,” he said, “ commenced two or three 
years since, when I found myself from time to time 
embarrassed by the presence of a large cat, which came 
and disappeared I could not exactly tell how, till the 
truth was finally forced upon me, and I was compelled 
to regard it as no household cat, but as a bubble of the 
elements, which had no existence, save in my deranged 
visual organs or depraved imagination. Still I had 
not that positive objection to the animal entertained by 
a late gallant Highland chieftain, who has been seen to 
change to all the colours of his own plaid, if a cat by 
accident happened to be in the room with him, even 
though he did not see it. On the contrary, I am rather 
a friend to cats, and endured with so much equanimity 
the presence of my imaginary attendant, that it had 
become almost indifferent to me; when within the 
course of a few months it gave place to, or was suc¬ 
ceeded by, a spectre of a more important sort, or which 
at least had a more imposing appearance. This was no 
other than the apparition of a gentleman-usher, dressed 
as if to wait upon a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a Lord 
High Commissioner of the Kirk, or any other who 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


89 


bears on his brow the rank and stamp of delegated 
sovereignty. 

“This personage, arrayed in a court dress, with bag 
and sword, tamboured waistcoat, and chapeau-bras, 
glided beside me like the ghost of Beau Nash ; and 
whether in my own house or in another, ascended the 
stairs before me, as if to announce me in the drawing¬ 
room, and sometimes appeared to mingle with the 
company, though it was sufficiently evident that they 
were not aware of his presence, and that I alone was 
sensible of the visionary honours which this imaginary 
being seemed desirous to render me. This freak of the 
fancy did not produce much impression on me, though 
it led me to entertain doubts as to the nature of my dis¬ 
order, and alarm for the effect it might produce upon 
my intellect. But that modification of my disease also 
had its appointed duration. After a few months, the 
phantom of the gentleman-usher was seen no more, but 
was succeeded by one horrible to the sight, and distress¬ 
ing to the imagination, being no other than the image 
of death itself—the apparition of a skeleton. “ Alone or 
in company,” said the unfortunate invalid, “ the 
presence of this last phantom never quits me. I in 
vain tell myself a hundred times over that it is no 


90 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


reality, but merely an image summed up by the morbid 
acuteness of my own excited imagination and deranged 
organs of sight. But what avail such reflections, while 
the emblem and presage at once of mortality is before 
my eyes, and while I feel myself, though in fancy only,, 
the companion of a phantom representing a ghostly 
inhabitant of the grave, even while I yet breathe on 
the earth ? Science, philosophy, even religion, has no 
cure for such a disorder; and I feel too surely that I 
shall die the victim to so melancholy a disease, although 
I have no belief whatever in the reality of the phantom 
which it places before me.” 

The physician was distressed to perceive, from these 
details, how strongly this visionary apparition was fixed 
in the imagination of his patient. He ingeniously 
urged the sick man, who was then in bed, with ques¬ 
tions concerning the circumstances of the phantom’s 
appearance, trusting he might lead him, as a sensible 
man, into such contradictions and inconsistencies as 
might rouse his common sense, which seemed to be 
unimpaired, against the fantastic disorder which pro¬ 
duced such effects. 

“This skeleton, then,” said the doctor, “seems to 
you to be always present to your eyes ? ” 


A BOOX ABOUT SHAMS. 


91 


“It is my fate, unhappily,” answered the invalid, 
“ always to see it.” 

“ Then, I understand,” continued the physician, “ it 
is now present to your imagination?” 

“ To my imagination it certainly is so,” replied the 
sick man. 

“And in what part of the chamber do you now 
conceive the apparition to appear ? ” the physician 
inquired. 

“ Immediately at the foot of my bed; when the cur¬ 
tains are left a little open,” answered the invalid, “the 
skeleton, to my thinking, is placed between them, and 
fills the vacant space.” 

“You say you are sensible of the delusion,” said his 
friend; “have you firmness to convince yourself of the 
truth of this ? Can you take courage enough to rise 
and place yourself in the spot so seemingly to be occu¬ 
pied, and convince yourself of the illusion?” 

The poor man sighed, and shook his head negatively. 

“Well,” said the doctor, “we will try the experi¬ 
ment otherwise.” 

Accordingly, he rose from his chair by the bedside, 


92 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


and placing himself between the two half-drawn cur¬ 
tains at the foot of the bed, indicated as the place occu¬ 
pied by the apparition, asked if the spectre was still 
visible ? 

“Not entirely so,” replied the patient, “because 
your person is betwixt him and me ; but I observe his 
skull peering above your shoulder.” 

It is alleged the man of science started on the instant, 
despite his philosophy, on receiving an answer affirm¬ 
ing, with such minuteness, that the ideal spectre 
was close to his own person. He resorted to other 
means of investigation and cure, but with equally indif¬ 
ferent success. The patient sank into deeper and deeper 
dejection, and died in the same distress of mind in 
which he had spent the latter months of his life ; and 
his case remains a melancholy instance of the power of 
imagination to kill the body, even when its fantastic 
terrors cannot overcome the intellect of the unfortunate 
persons who suffer under them. 

The impostures practised upon the credulous with 
regard to ghosts, spectral illusions, and supernatural 
revelations are many of them exceedingly ridiculous 
and amusing. Sir Walter Scott, in his book on 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


93 


Demonology and Witchcraft, describes a scene at which 
he was present and an eyewitness. Happening to he 
in Trafalgar Square one night, he was attracted to an 
unusual crowd opposite Northumberland House. On 
inquiring what was the object that attracted the atten¬ 
tion of so large an assemblage of people, it at length 
oozed out that some one for a lark had commenced mut¬ 
tering: “By heaven, it wags!—it wags again!” In 
a few minutes the whole street was blockaded, some con¬ 
curring that they had absolutely, seen the Lion of 
Percy wag its tail, others waiting patiently, expecting 
to witness the same phenomenon. 

Shakspeare evidently had a correct appreciation of 
this subject when he planned the Ghost Scene in 
Macbeth. When spectral illusions are accompanied, as 
they occasionally may be, by supernatural sounds, the 
effect produced on the mind of the person by whom the 
phenomena are observed is still more striking. The 
appearance of spectres, apparitions, illusions, and 
hallucinations, apart altogether from insanity, are not 
uncommon to persons of a certain temperament, as the 
result of an altered condition of the blood circulating 
through the brain. Incipient apoplexy is often accom¬ 
panied with spectral illusions of the most distressing 


94 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


character. The “ blue-devils,” as they are called, in 
delirium tremens, depend upon a similar condition of 
brain. These apparitions sometimes continue per¬ 
manent, and thus inflict retributive justice upon many 
a would-be repentant bacchanal. Among the many 
curious cases illustrative of the subject, the following 
is related by Sir Walter Scott:— 

“ A young man of fortune, who had led what is 
called a “gay life” so as considerably to injure both his 
health and fortune, was at length obliged to consult a 
physician as to the best means of restoring the former. 

“ One of his principal complaints was the frequent 
presence of a set of apparitions, resembling a band of 
•figures dressed in green, who performed in his drawing¬ 
room a singular dance, to which he was compelled to 
bear witness, though he knew, to his great annoyance, 
that the whole corps-de-ballet existed only in his own 
imagination. 

“ The physician immediately informed him that he 
had lived upon town too long and too fast not to require 
an exchange to a more healthy and natural course of 
life. He therefore prescribed a gentle course of medi¬ 
cine, but earnestly recommended to his patient to retire 
to his own house in the country, observe a temperate diet 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


95 


and early hours, practising regular exercise, and on the 
same principle avoiding fatigue, and assured him that 
by doing so he might bid adieu to black spirits, and 
white, blue, green, and grey, with all their trumpery. 
The patient observed the advice, and prospered. His 
physician, after the interval of a month, received a 
grateful letter from him, acknowledging the success of 
his regimen. The green goblins had disappeared, and 
with them the unpleasant train of emotions to which 
their visits had given rise; and the patient had ordered 
his town-house to be disfumished and sold, while the 
furniture was to be sent down to his residence in the 
country, where he was determined in future to spend 
his life, without exposing himself to the temptations of 
town. One would have supposed this a well-devised 
scheme for health. But, alas ! no sooner had the 
furniture of the London drawing-room been placed in 
order in the gallery of the old manor-house, than the 
former delusion returned in full force! The green 
figurantes, whom the patient’s depraved imagination 
had so long associated with these movables, came caper¬ 
ing and frisking to accompany them, exclaiming with 
great glee, as if the sufferer should have been rejoiced 
to see them, ‘ Here we all are—here we all are! ’ 


96 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


“ The visionary, if I recollect right, was so much 
shocked at their appearance, that he retired abroad, in 
despair that any part of Britain could shelter him from 
the daily persecution of this domestic ballet.” 

Certain drugs and perfumes are reputed to have the 
power of enabling persons submitted to their influence 
to conjure up at will all sorts of extraordinary- 
phantoms. A fungus grown in Asia Minor, called the 
Amanita Muscaria, is said to possess this wonderful 
property. The late Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh was 
accustomed, when lecturing to his class upon the subject 
of spectres, to relate the following case:— 

“I am in the habit,” said a patient, “ of dining at 
five, and exactly as the hour of six arrives, I am sub¬ 
jected to the following painful visitation :—The door of 
the room, even when I have been weak enough to bolt 
it, which I have sometimes done, flies wide open; an 
old hag, like one of those who haunted the death of 
Torresenters, with a frowning and incensed countenance, 
comes straight up to me with every demonstration of 
spite and indignation which could characterise her who 
haunted the merchant Abudah in the Oriental tale, she 
rushes upon me, says something, but so hastily that I 
cannot discover the purport, and then strikes me a 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


97 


severe blow with her staff. I fall from my chair in a 
swoon, which is of longer or shorter duration. To 
the recurrence of this apparition, I am daily subjected. 
And such is my new and singular complaint.” 

The doctor immediately asked, whether his patient 
had invited any one to sit with him when he expected 
such a visitation ? He answered in the negative; say¬ 
ing that the nature of his complaint was so singular, 
it was so likely to be imputed to fancy, or even to 
mental derangement, that he had shrunk from com¬ 
municating the circumstance to any one. “ Then,” 
said the doctor, “ -with your permission, I will dine with 
you to-day tete-a-tete, and we will see if your malig¬ 
nant old woman will venture to join our company.” 

The patient accepted the proposal with hope and 
gratitude, for he had expected ridicule rather than 
sympathy. They met at dinner, and Dr. Gregory, who 
suspected some nervous disorder, exerted his powers of 
conversation, well known to be of the most varied and 
brilliant character, to keep the attention of his host 
engaged, and prevent him from thinking on the approach 
of the fated hour, to which he was accustomed to look 
forward with so much terror. He succeeded in his 
purpose better than he had hoped. The hour of six 

Or 


98 


A. HOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


came almost unnoticed, and it was hoped might pass 
away without any evil consequence ; but it had scarce 
a moment struck, when the owner of the house ex¬ 
claimed, in an alarmed voice : “ The hag comes again!” 
and dropped back in his chair in a swoon, in the way 
he had himself described. The physician caused him 
to be bled, and satisfied himself that the periodical 
shocks of which his patient complained, arose from a 
tendency to apoplexy. 



CHAPTER YI. 


—O— 


Cagliostro, the Great Type of Shams.—His Character, Birth, 
and Description.—Marriage.—Shams, the Offspring of cer¬ 
tain Phases of Society.—Cagliostro’s Travels.—A Proteus 
of Medicos.—His Wife.—His Imprisonment and Escape.— 
Visit to London and Return to the Continent.—Life at Paris. 
—Strange Story related by Prince Talleyrand. 


eVpV^VaHILE Mesmer and his disciples were essaying 
3yS)/6 their arts of deception, another Sham, even of 
greater mark, was already attracting to himself the 


wonder and admiration of a deluded public. 


Many writers have attempted a history of the so- 
called Count Cagliostro, but all appear more or less to 
have failed; their principal difficulty arising from the 









iOO A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 

fact that he lived so much by deception—changed his 
sphere and mode of operation so frequently, and adopted 
so many aliases, that one becomes completely confused 
in separating the truth from the falsehood. All writers, 
however, have arrived at the unanimous opinion that 
he was the most unscrupulous, the most ingenious, 
and the most impudent impostor the world has ever 
known. 

Cagliostro founded no particular system, and conse¬ 
quently left no disciples. His skill (for undoubtedly he 
possessed great skill) consisted chiefly in his knowledge 
of human nature, his power to deceive others, and his 
marvellous ability to adapt himself to the circumstances 
in which he was placed. The readiness with which he 
could seize upon and adopt any scheme which appeared 
for the time most likely to answer his purpose, was 
quite marvellous. His were many of the attributes 
which, some persons may think, if submitted to proper 
training, would have resulted in the development of 
a great man; but no training in the world, we are con¬ 
vinced, would have made him other than what he was 
—being as much a Sham born as Shakspeare was a poet; 
and it would have been just as easy to have changed 
the colour of the Ethiopian’s skin, or the leopard’s 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


101 


spots, as to have wrought any change in him. Starting 
in life as a city Arab, he figured successively as a forger, 
as a novice among the Brothers of Mercy at the Monas¬ 
tery of Cartagerone, an apothecary’s bottle-washer, an 
artist, an alchemist, an astrologer, a necromancer, a 
house-painter, a Freemason, a revolutionist, a prince, 
a Mesmerist, a clairvoyant, a quack doctor, an author; 
and lastly, when in prison at Borne, a general informer 
against all persons and systems which he had previously 
made use of as means to his end. The end proved, 
however, a vastly different one to what he had antici¬ 
pated. 

All men or women who become notorious, or whose 
names continue to be remembered by their fellow-men, 
whether for good or evil, ought to have the leading 
features of their lives chronicled and preserved;—in the 
one case as a guide to others, pointing to the foot-marks 
in the virtuous path of those who have done well and 
passed away;—in the other .case, to serve as a warning 
to such as are too prone to deviate from the straight 
path and go headlong to a prison or the gallows. It is 
thus that the lives of noted criminals acquire their only 
importance, unless in so far as they reflect the condition 
of society in their day. We find, for instance, in 


102 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


different parts of the world, as well as at different 
periods, that crime and criminals assume new and dis¬ 
tinctive features. At one time they are characterized, 
as in our own country, by great daring, combined with 
a certain amount of courage and enterprise;—such as 
was evinced by Robin Hood, who is believed to have 
overrun the Forest of Sherwood and the neighbouring 
counties ; and to have earned on his marauding • adven¬ 
tures for more than fifty years, during which time he 
succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the justices who 
were ever on his track. We have again what may be 
called the age of Turpin, when crime and robbery were 
committed in the most daring and reckless manner upon 
the king’s highways. Later on we have the low brutal 
age of crime and murder, when Hare and Burke, with 
their loathsome accomplices, lay in wait at every street 
comer prepared to do murder for gain. In fact Shams 
of all kinds may be said to be the peculiar development 
of the age in which they live ; the public of their time 
being the rich and loamy soil from which they draw 
their nourishment and life. 

The history of the world does not point to any 
country or age which evinced such thirst for blood and 
vengeance, as that which marked the period of the 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS, 


103 


French Revolution. It was during these years of 
violence that, as we have already seen, Cagliostro and 
his associates were enabled, especially by means of the 
so-called Egyptian Masonry, to practise upon the 
credulity of the French people. It seems almost a 
general law that the condition of society at certain 
periods calls into existence a certain class of characters 
bearing its stamp. Shams, for instance, abound in the 
present day, of the lowest and most ignorant class, 
greedy and avaricious, ready to sacrifice every honest 
principle to love of gain ; but this, nevertheless, is not 
the age to produce a second Cagliostro. Had he been 
born in the year of grace 1843 and commenced his 
career in 1863, he would have found that the game had 
been played out a hundred years ago. Men are now 
past believing in alchemy, necromancy, and the philoso¬ 
pher’s stone, and reject the lies which passed current 
in the last century, unless when varnished by a certain 
amount of truth. In science, for instance, the Sham 
now-a-days finds it convenient to build his pretensions 
upon some plausibly substantive basis. 

The state of public feeling during what has been 
termed the Cagliostric period, was one of escape from 
superstitious dogmas and excessive formularism to one 


104 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


of no creeds or forms, save those which floated on the 
winds of the time. This was exactly the condition of 
society favourable to the successful career of an impos¬ 
tor like Cagliostro. Fate appeared to throw in his way 
the exact kind of means best suited to accomplish the 
end and aim of his existence. He absorbed, as it were, 
the national faith, which for a while had broken its 
allegiance from the religion of the nation, and was seek¬ 
ing some fresh object of worship. Cagliostro found this 
principle in what he called the Egyptian Order of 
Freemasonry, of which he became, as we have already 
said, the Grand Copt, or Chief, and which was alleged 
by him to have been founded by the Prophets Enoch 
and Elijah—in order to make his dupes believe that the 
true principles and tenets of religion had been handed 
down pure and undefiled through a succession of Grand 
Copts, of whom he was the regularly appointed suc¬ 
cessor. This theory was made to appear as plausible 
as possible, and for a time it found favour with those 
who, having rejected the creeds in which they had been 
born, were prepared to accept whatever others might 
be offered in their stead. Thus for the nonce Egyptian 
Masonry absorbed the faith of the people, and until 
the bubble burst, they were led captive at Cagliostro’s 
will. There is but one step between the sublime and 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


105 


the ridiculous, and that step Frenchmen at the time 
we speak of did not hesitate to take. 

In touching upon the career of Cagliostro, from the 
time of his expulsion from the Monastery at Cartagerone 
until his final capture by the Holy Inquisition, and 
safe custody in the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome, many 
persons and events will necessarily have to he passed 
in review, since he became identified during a period of 
thirty-six years with not a few of the characters which 
figure most prominently during that eventful period, and 
did much, as we shall see, to compromise the fair 
fame of one of the noblest queens in Christendom. 
Besides having found as an accomplice, in this affair, a 
Cardinal Prince of Rome, whose bosom friend he 
became, he seems to have secured the belief and 
admiration of many of the ablest men in France— 
among the number Prince Talleyrand. A man who 
could do all this simply by the force of his own wits, 
could have been no ordinary person, and his feats 
deserve to be recorded. 

Cagliostro was born at Palermo in the year 1743 ; 
his real name was Joseph Balsamo, and he is supposed 
to have derived the title of Cagliostro from his god¬ 
mother. His youthful appearance has been described 


106 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


as follows :—“ A stout, thick-set, high-shouldered, 
clumsy boy, with an olive skin, broad flat nose, low 
forehead, large eyes, and long black greasy hair—with 
a squint in his right eye—noisy, turbulent, and over¬ 
bearing, quick to quarrel, disliked and despised by his 
fellow boys. He was dismissed from the laboratory of 
the monastery at Cartagerone and scouted for his idle¬ 
ness and gluttony; his knavery and lying having become 
incorrigible.” His father, formerly a small shopkeeper, 
had died, and his mother was now too poor to maintain 
him. . 

Our hero was very fond of the theatre; and when 
unable to obtain orders, had a happy knack of forging 
them. A boisterous, ragged, aggressive Arab, of whom 
all parents were in perpetual fear and dread, he spent 
his time in the streets, loafing and lounging with the 
most idle and dissolute. 

The incipient charlatan’s first great adventure appears 
to have been the cheating of a goldsmith of Palermo 
out of a considerable sum of money, under the pretence 
of discovering to him some hidden treasure. On this 
occasion, his life having been threatened, he was obliged 
to leave Sicily and go to Rome, where he married a 
young woman named Lorenza Felic-iani—a person as 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


107 


full of deception as himself—and who is described as 
“of petite figure, round-faced, even-featured, pretty, 
with fine eyes.” Cagliostro alias Balsamo continued 
to reside with his wife’s parents at Borne, getting his 
living by selling pen-and-ink drawings. These, how¬ 
ever, were not what they appeared to be, but common 
prints, to which, with a little labour, Balsamo succeeded 
in imparting a look of originality and art. 

Cagliostro derived a great advantage from the extent 
of his travels, having visited all the towns in the 
Mediterranean, besides paying several visits to Egypt, 
Asia Minor, and the Archipelago. No doubt, the know¬ 
ledge he acquired of the manners and customs of Eastern 
nations afforded him great opportunities of pushing the 
pretensions of the so-called system of Egyptian Masonry 
in Europe. He was accompanied by a noted alchemist, 
named Altolas, during a succession of visits to Malta, 
Borne, and Naples, in each of which places he assumed 
a fresh title and plied a new trade. Alchemy seems to 
have suited his purpose best whilst at Malta, where by 
means of it he contrived to ingratiate himself with the 
Grand Master Pinto. Eorgery and necromancy appear 
to have obtained for him the means of a precarious sub¬ 
sistence whilst at Borne and Naples. Everywhere he 


108 


A HOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


pretended to possess a power to cure disease, either by 
the aid of magic, magnetism, or one of the many 
nostrums which he professed to have discovered. The 
so-called “ elixir of life ” was the joint swindle of him¬ 
self and Altolas. The “ cantharaclic tincture,” as it was 
called, was the most extravagant of his remedies. It 
was a cure of no mean order, inasmuch as he estimated 
the cost at 800/. a drop. 

After his marriage with Lorenza Eeliciani, he paid 
three visits to England. On the first occasion his wife 
appears to have been the cleverer cheat of the two, and 
is said to have obtained plenty of money by pretending 
that her husband possessed the wonderful power of 
removing all appearance of age from the faces of even 
the most ancient. As an instance of her cunning, she 
contrived to defraud a certain Quaker out of a fee of one 
hundred guineas, on the pretence of restoring to him 
the vigour and beauty of youth. The husband in the 
meantime having been convicted ten times for swindling, 
the pair found it convenient to fly to Paris; hut here he 
was prohibited from practising as a physician. Many tales 
are told of attempts made by Lorenza Eeliciani on this 
and other occasions to escape from her husband, owing 
to the dread she entertained of the great power he pos- 


. A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


109 

sessed over the wills and bodies of others. No doubt 
much that has been written about her escape to the Con¬ 
vent of St. Denis, and her subsequent capture by Cag- 
liostro, may he untrue: nevertheless, the fact remains 
that to the very close of her career she longed for the 
repose and peace of the cloister, and never rested until 
she prevailed upon her husband to return to Italy. On 
her arrival at Rome she escaped to a convent, where she 
made confession of her own and her husband’s mis¬ 
doings, which was subsequently published. 

Finding he was unable to pursue the profession of 
medico in the French capital, Cagliostro, under the title 
of the Marquis de’ Pellegrini, visited Germany and the 
Netherlands, and was ultimately imprudent enough, at 
the solicitation of his wife, to re-visit Palermo. The 
old jeweller, Marano, whom he had swindled out of 
60 ounces of gold, was not to be deceived a second 
time, but soon detected in the Marquis de’ Pellegrini his 
old churchyard thief, Joseph Balsamo. The marquis 
was arrested and thrown into prison, where he would 
doubtless have ended his days had it not been for his 
wife—who, by winning the affections of a Sicilian 
prince, managed to obtain his release. The means 
which the prince took to gain his purpose are somewhat 


110 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


remarkable. It is said he contrived to obtain Cagliostro’s 
release “ by thrashing the prosecutor’s lawyer and in¬ 
timidating the president of the court.” 

On his release from prison, our great Sham travelled 
in Italy and Spain under the name of Dr. Tischio, 
everywhere .practising the profession of medico and 
exhibiting the usual characteristics of his class—who, as 
a rule, are exceedingly migratory, and seem to find con¬ 
tinual change necessary to their existence. Mr. Las- 
celles Wraxall gives the following particulars concern¬ 
ing him about this time :—“ In Spain he made a living 
by selling a “ water of beauty,” converting hemp 
into silk, making gold of mercury, melting small 
diamonds to produce larger ones, but chiefly by pre¬ 
dicting lucky numbers in the lottery—a secret he would 
not have failed to benefit by himself, if he had been 
completely convinced of its efficiency.” After leaving 
Spain he again paid a visit to London, where he was 
admitted into a Freemasons’ lodge. Henceforth he 
only moved in the highest circles, living en prince , and 
by giving his intrigues a new and more brilliant 
character managed to obtain an extraordinary in¬ 
fluence, especially over men and women of weak 
character. His portrait and that of Lorenza were worn 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


Ill 


on fans, rings, and medallions, and busts were sold 
of him in marble and plaster, bearing the inscription 
Divo Cagliostro ; which was the only name he thence¬ 
forth acknowledged. 

At the Hague all the Masonic lodges rivalled each 
other in the brilliancy of the reception they gave him. 
Here he was even compelled to open a ladies’ lodge, 
and advocated his new Masonic system, of Egyptian 
origin as he said, but did not succeed in getting it com¬ 
pletely adopted till October, 1784, on the establish¬ 
ment of his grand lodge “for the triumph of truth ” at 
Lyons. It was said that he got the first idea of his 
system when in London, from a MS. by one George 
Capston. 

On leaving the Hague, Cagliostro spent some time 
in Venice, and then returned to Northern Europe. 
At Berlin he obtained no sympathy; so from there 
he proceeded to Mittau, and from thence to St. 
Petersburg—where he tried to pass off as a Spanish 
colonel ; but the ambassador of that country pro¬ 
tested against this assumption. Dr. Hugensohn, 
physician to the Empress, also displayed such deter¬ 
mined scepticism of his pretensions, that the great 
charlatan found it useless to remain any longer in the 


112 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


Russian capital: so he went by way of Warsaw to 
Frankfort, and thence to Strasburg, where he met with 
the most wonderful success. In speaking of him at 
this time, La Borde says: “I saw more than 5,000 
sick people who owed their existence to him.” It was 
at Strasburg that he first became acquainted with the 
Cardinal de Rohan, whom he subsequently accompanied 
to the French capital. Whilst at Paris he appears to 
have divided his time between presiding at revolu¬ 
tionary meetings of the so-called Egyptian Masons— 
banqueting with Cardinal de Rohan, the Countess 
de La Motte, and others; and holding seances, to 
which he succeeded in attracting dupes from all 
Europe—some out of belief in his marvellous powers of 
curing diseases, others from a feeling of curiosity. 

At this time Cagliostro dealt largely in Mesmerism; 
maintaining with Mesmer that magnetism was capable 
of being transmitted like electricity through inter¬ 
mediate conductors, and by this means professing to 
supply his patients with medicines. The following inci¬ 
dent is related by Prince Talleyrand—and seems a more 
than ordinary French gooseberry to our way of think¬ 
ing:—“ Among the many impostors who abounded at 
the time, none was more conspicuous than the famous 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


113 


Cagliostro. He had arrived from Italy under extra¬ 
ordinary and mysterious circumstances; his coming had 
been preceded by rumours more strange, more surprising 
still, and his door was besieged at once by all the rich and 
idle, the marvel-loving- portion of the population of Paris. 
Among the rest, I am ashamed to confess that I was one 
of the most ardent. I was very young at the time, and 
had not acquired that distrust of all pretension which 
years alone can give. Many months, however, had 
elapsed before I could obtain the audience I so much 
coveted. Thousands of persons had to pass by right be¬ 
fore me, and it was said that, immediately on his arrival, 
his books were so filled with the names of the highest 
and mightiest, that, had he been just, and received them 
each in turn, the candidates at the bottom of the list 
would have known their future by experience long be¬ 
fore he could by any possible means have foretold it. 

“ I myself knew an officer in the Regiment de 

Plandre, who, being quartered at Metz, and not being 

able to obtain from his colonel leave of absence, threw 

up his commission, in order to keep his appointment 

with Cagliostro on a certain day in Paris, so fearful was 

he of losing the valuable information concerning the 

future which the magician had to give him. 

n 


114 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


“ I cannot even now repress a smile, when I remem¬ 
ber the awe and terror with which I entered the pre¬ 
sence of the conjuror. I had not dared to go alone; 
M. de Boufflers had kindly consented to accompany me; 
and yet my embarrassment was not wholly dissipated 
even with the prospect of his company; so fearful was 
I of missing the object of my visit, that I had wasted 
so much time in thinking of all the questions which 1 
meant to propound to him, as to have even written 
many of them upon my calpin, with the intention of 
consulting it in case of need. 

“It was already dusk when we were admitted into the 
awful presence of the conjuror; not quite dark without 
doors, yet sufficiently so within to require the aid of 
tapers. The ante-chamber was filled with impatient 
applicants, who railed at us as we passed through the 
door of the chamber where the wizard was holding his 
incantations. The whole scene was very like those 
introduced in the early Spanish dramas, and inspired 
one with the most awful forebodings as to what was 
about to follow. 

“We found the magician in his study. He was just 
at the moment engaged in dismissing two poor patients, 
to whom he had given advice gratuitously. The one 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


115 


was a crippled figure, whose distorted and haggard 
countenance formed a most fitting accessory to the 
scene of devilry ; the other was an old mendicant friar, 
afflicted with the shaking palsy, whose restless limbs 
and hesitating speech made him appear as if under the 
influence of some wizard spell. 

“ As soon as we entered, Cagliostro led his guests to 
a door at the farther end of the chamber, which was 
veiled by a thick tapestry, and opening it without the 
slightest noise, ushered them through it into the passage 
beyond, and then, closing it again with the same atten¬ 
tion to silence, returned to the spot where we were 
standing, and, placing his finger on his lips, pointed 
towards a still and motionless figure seated in one 
comer of the room, and which, from the obscurity that 
reigned around, we had not observed on our entrance. 
The figure was that of a female, covered from head to 
foot with a veil of black crape, so long and ample that 
it disguised even the form of the fauteuil on which she 
was seated. 

‘‘Cagliostro bade us take seats at a table covered 
with green velvet, upon which was placed divers 
mysterious-looking instruments of torture, sundry 
queer-shaped bottles and diabolical volumes, and then, 


116 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


standing up before us, in solemn and biblical language, 
inquired wherefore we had sought him, and what it was 
that we desired to know. Such was the effect of the 
sudden questioning, the mystery of the interview, the 
silence and the darkness, that Boufflers, who was to 
have spoken first, was quite overawed by the whole 
scene, and could find no words to answer the summons, 
but sat stammering and hesitating, while I took the 
opportunity of examining slowly and at leisure the 
wonderous adept. 

“ Boufflers still remaining mute, the conjuror turned 
to me, and asked me, in a voice which had already lost 
much of its solemnity, and partook of something like 
harshness, if I also had come unprepared with a subject 
of consultation; as, if so, we had best depart at once, 
and leave the field to others, whose business might be of 
more importance, and who were waiting with such 
impatience without. The question roused all the 
courage which was left within me, for I began to fear 
that the magician might grow wearied, and dismiss 
us as he threatened, and I answered in a low voice that 
I wished to consult him concerning the health of a 
person who was dear to me. 

“ Cagliostro turned, and by a movement so abrupt 


















































































































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✓ 




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A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


117 


and sudden that it made us both start to our feet, drew 
the fauteuil wherein was seated the veiled mysterious 
form of the female, who had remained all this time 
silent and motionless, across the floor, and still the 
figure moved not. The feet resting on a board attached 
to the bottom of the fauteuil, moved with the rest, pro¬ 
ducing an indescribable effect. At the present day, 
when the mysteries of Mesmerism have become common 
household talk, and somnambulism has been made a 
general voie-de-guerison for every complaint under 
heaven, all this will appear vain and puerile ceremony; 
but, at the period of which I am now speaking, they 
were familiar only to the initiated few, and Boufflers 
and I, poor ignorant novices, were struck with awe 
and wonder. 

“ ‘ What is it you seek to know? ’ said Cagliostro, 
resuming once more his solemn and theatrical air; and, 
drawing a little aside the veil of black crape, he bent 
towards the ear of the female, and whispered a few 
words which we could not understand. 

“I was so afraid at the moment of losing, as my 
friend Boufflers had already done, the memory of what 
I had to say, that I replied hurriedly, never thinking 
of myself, nor of the thousand and one questions which 


118 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


I had predetermined to ask—‘ I wish to learn the cause 
of the migraine of my friend the Marquise de-’ 

“ i Chut! ’ interrupted Cagliostro. ‘ The name is of 
little import. "VVhat see you ? ’ added he, in a loud 
deep tone, turning to the veiled figure. 

“‘I see a fair and beauteous lady,’ replied a sweet 
soft voice from beneath the veil. ‘ She is attired in a 
dress of sea-green Padua silk, her powdered hair is 
wreathed with rose-buds, and she wears long and 
splendid ear-drops of emerald and topaz.’ 

outliers caught my arm, with a smile, which the 
excitement of the moment had converted into a grimace, 
for he knew well enough the person for whom I was so 
anxious, and knew, moreover, that there were certain 
nights on which she wore the emerald and topaz suit, 
and that this very night Avas one of them. The veiled 
form continued, in the same low voice : £ The lady is 
pressing her hand to her brow at this very instant. Is 
it with pain, or is it with care ? She is Avaiting for 
some one, for now she rises and looks at the clock upon 
the console, and now she goes to the small side-door to 
listen.’ 



A. BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


119 


‘“Enough, enough!’ said I, in my turn, growing im¬ 
patient ; ‘ tell me at once what it is that ails the lady, 
and what may he the remedy.’ 

‘ ‘ The figure spoke aloud no more, but whispered 
long in Cagliostro’s ear, and the latter, turning to me, 
said, with ease and aplomb, ‘ The lady’s migraines are 
caused by over-watching and anxiety—the cure is easy, 
and must be applied at once—the cause will be removed 
in time.’ 

“ He pushed back the fauteuil into the corner whence 
he had drawn it; the veiled figure by which it was 
occupied remained still and motionless as death. He 
then opened a small door in the wainscot, belonging to 
a cupboard filled with shelves, containing bottles of all 
sorts and sizes, and drew from it a phial, which he 
filled from a jug which stood upon the floor, and 
having performed various * passes ’ and evolutions over 
it, he handed it to me, bidding my companion and my¬ 
self to lose no time in retiring, for others were waiting 
outside. His dismissal of us was as abrupt as possible; 
scarcely, indeed, consistent with politeness. ‘You have 
told your ailments and your griefs—you bear with you 
the never-failing cure—now begone.’ 


120 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


“ With these words he opened the same low door 
through which he had let out the two visitors whom we 
had succeeded ; and Boufflers and I passed out, obeying 
without a word the gesture of the magician, which 
pointed towards the passage beyond. 

“ Such is the history of my first interview with the 
great Cagliostro. To you, who behold daily the strange 
and varied examples of magnetism, my story will 
perhaps appear poor and puerile ; but you must remem¬ 
ber that, at the time, the thing was new, and, notwith¬ 
standing ail that has been discovered since, none has 
surpassed him; even to this very hour, the secret of 
Cagliostro has not been discovered. It is supposed that 
ventriloquism was much employed by him iu his various 
tours-de-force. Perhaps it was made the agent of 
deception in my own case, and the figure veiled with 
black crape may have been a mere puppet set up to 
delude the credulous. The circumstance which would 
seem to favour greatly the suspicion of imposture is, 
that as Cagliostro never employed twice the same 
agency, the consultant could never come prepared to 
watch and detect the machinery of his experiments, 
and in fact, being always taken by surprise, had no 
leisure to think of anything else than the consultation 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


121 


lie had come to hold. Again, how could the adept 
have known, by natural means, that the Marquise de 

Br-, whom he had not suffered me to name, was 

young and beauteous—that she possessed ear-drops of 
emerald and topaz—which mixture of jewels was pecu¬ 
liar—and that she would wear them on that very night? 
All these reflections completely bewildered me, as I 
hastened on to the Opera, certain that the Marquise 
would be there, full of curiosity to see if her dress and 
appearance would correspond with Cagliostro’s descrip¬ 
tion. Boufflers could not help me, nor suggest a single 
idea to solve the mystery, so absorbed was he in the 
memory of the strange scene he had been witnessing— 
so completely wonder-struck by the silence and mystery 
of the whole proceeding. 

“We arrived at the Opera just as the curtain was 
about to rise. I shall never forget the performance, so 
linked is it in my memory with that night’s adventure. It 
was Gluck’s opera of Alceste. Boufflers and myself took 
our places in the parterre, immediately below the loge 
of the marquise, which was empty, and remained so for 
some time; and I can assure you that, when, in the 
midst of one of the most pathetic scenes of the opera, I 
heard the door of the box open, and a valet-de-chambre 


122 


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announce, as was the usage among the fashionables of 

the day, 1 Madame la Marquise de Br-,’ we both 

turned sharply round. She entered, muffled up to the 
chin, and evidently suffering greatly from her old 
enemy, the migraine, for she held a screen before her 
eyes to shield them from the glare of light, and bent 
her head upon her hand as soon as she had taken her 
seat. 


li 1 Look! she has roses in her hair,’ exclaimed Bouf- 
flers, all aghast. 

“It was true enough the roses were there; and I 
could see even more, for the ear-drops of emerald and 
topaz caught the light of the girandole in front of her 
box, and played before my eyes in a most tantalizing 
manner. 

“ Presently the marquise, overcome by the heat, with¬ 
drew her cloak and muffles, and stood revealed to us in 
the full light, exactly as she had been described to us 
so short a time before. The dress of sea-green Padua 
silk, looped with roses, seemed completely to choke poor 
Boufflers, as he stood gazing on her in mute amazement. 
So far, the wizard had told us the truth.” 



A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS, 


123 


Since Talleyrand’s day, the same experiment has 
been repeated, and in thousands of instances has suc¬ 
ceeded. No doubt many people have some little story 
of a similar kind to tell, and even more striking and 
interesting than the one above related, but the sequel 
of the anecdote, we think, is unique, so completely did 
the adventure jump from the sublime to the ridiculous 
at a single bound. 

“At the conclusion of the piece,” continues the nar¬ 
rator, “ we both repaired to the box of the Marquise de 

Br-. She was suffering greatly from her migraine, 

and greeted me ironically, observing that I was ‘ bien 
aimable et bien galant ’—that she had waited for me to 
. escort her to the Opera, and had been compelled to 
depart from home alone. After the performance, we 
all adjourned to her hotel. I had completely reinstated 
myself in her good graces, by the promise of a ^com¬ 
plete cure for her migraine. The gentlemen of the 
company, however, all voted that a glass or two of 
champagne should be tried first, before the dear mar¬ 
quise was put to pain and torture by any of the 
diabolical remedies of the sorcerer, Cagliostro. The 
vote was carried, and the marquise compelled to submit 
to their subscription first, which she did with the 



124 


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greatest grace and good humour, using every effort to 
appear gay, although evidently suffering much pain at 
the very moment. 

“ I will not attempt to record all the good things 
which were uttered at the petit souper, nor all the 
idees folle3 to which the champagne gave birth. Bout¬ 
liers was quite himself again, and had recovered all his 
wonted vivacity, all his mad gaiety, and kept us in a 
roar of laughter by his wicked sallies and pointed jokes 
concerning our visit to Cagliostro. He counterfeited 
with such excessive humour the whole scene as it had 
passed before his eyes, that no one could have imagined 
him to be the same individual who had sat quaking in 
fear and awe before the very man whose power he was 
now deriding in such exquisite glee. 

“Of course the phial and the contents became soon 
the objects of attack, and I was petitioned on all sides 
for a view of them. By the permission of the marquise 
herself, I yielded to the clamour, and it was handed 
round amid the commentaries of the laughing guests, 
until Boufliers proposed that the remedy should at once 
be tried in the presence of us all, so that, if it failed, 
we might at once go and give Cagliostro the charivari 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


125 


which he would so richly deserve ; and, if it succeeded, 
we might publish its virtues and the compounder’s skill 
throughout the world. 

“ It was not till I had uncorked the phial, and was 
about to pour it into a glass, that it all at once occurred 
to me, that, in the hurry of our dismissal from the pre¬ 
sence of Cagliostro, I had entirely omitted to ascer¬ 
tain whether the liquid was to be taken as a medicine, 
or to be applied externally. To the eye, it was nothing 
but pure water from the fountain, it possessed neither 
smell nor colour, and the greatest curiosity was excited 
to behold its marvellous effects. At length, by the 
suggestion of the marquise herself, who was growing 
weary of our badinage, it was decided that there would 
be less danger in misapplying it externally than in 
swallowing it, should it prove pernicious ; and as I was 
chosen to be the operator, I poured a small quantity of 
the water into the hollow of my hand, which Boufflers 
guiding, so that no', a drop was spilt, I placed gently 
as possible over the forehead of the marquise, pressing 
it there, but certainly not with violence, and, support¬ 
ing the back of her head with the hand that was free, 
held her thus, awaiting the result. 

“ The marquise closed her eyes, but uttered not a 


126 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


word, and there was a moment’s silence among the 
clamorous group, bending over her with such eager 
curiosity to witness the effect of the miraculous cure: 
when suddenly it was broken by a loud convulsive shriek 
from the marquise herself, which was almost echoed by 
many of those present, so sudden and startling did it 
burst from her lips. ‘Take away your hand! For 
God’s sake, take away your hand! ’ exclaimed she, in a 
voice of agony; and, starting to her feet, she endea¬ 
voured, with all her strength, to pull my wrist down¬ 
wards. But, strange to tell, not all the efforts of the 
marquise, nor those I used myself, could tear away my 
hand from her forehead! Xo words can describe the 
sensation of terror with which I found myself, not only 
deprived of the faculty of withdrawing my arm, but 
drawn by some powerful attraction closer and closer 
still, until it almost seemed as if the fingers were about 
to bury themselves in the flesh. 

“At first, as you may suppose, it was imagined by 
those present that the whole event was a jest, and 
the piteous shrieks of the marquise, and my own sup¬ 
plications for assistance, had at first been greeted with 
roars of laughter: but when it was found that the 
affair w r as serious, the company began to take alarm. 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


127 


It was not, however, till the unfortunate marquise sank 
back in her chair, fainting and exhausted, that the 
Due d’Argenton, recovering from the consternation in 
which the discovery of the extraordinary event had 
thrown the whole assembly, seized my wrist in a 
nervous grasp, and tore it by main force away, drawing 
with it large patches of skin from the forehead of the 
marquise, upon which the imprint of my touch remained 
in bleeding characters. My hand was torn and lacerated 
likewise, and the pain was unbearable. I bound it in 
my handkerchief, and gave all the assistance in my 

power towards the recovery of Madame de Br-, who 

was conveyed to bed, still in a deep swoon. We all 
remained in the saloon, which had so lately been the 
scene of our mad gaiety, with downcast looks and sub¬ 
dued voices, waiting the report of the surgeon who had 
been sent for to apply the proper remedies to the 
wounds of the marquise, who was not pronounced out 
of danger till towards morning. We then dispersed, 
with the firm determination of having the mystery 
cleared by Cagliostro himself as soon as possible. Bouf- 
fiers instantly repaired to M. de Sartines, the head of 
the police, and he furnished us with two officers, and 
with all power to make search at the magician’s house, 
or take any steps which we might deem necessary. 



128 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


“ Cagliostro received the visit with the greatest sang¬ 
froid, and, without the slightest resistance, allowed the 
officer to prosecute his search among the various tools 
and utensils which he employed in his calling. The 
large jug from which he had taken the liquid contained 
in the phial which he had given to me, still stood in 
the same place as on the preceding day. There re¬ 
mained hut a few drops, for his patients had been 
numerous: but these the officer poured into a bottle and 
conveyed to the nearest chemist, who laughed in the 
man’s face, and pronounced them to be clear water. 
To my bitter reproaches and angry exclamations, Cag¬ 
liostro replied, with perfect calmness, that the liquid 
was pure and innocent when he placed it in my hands, 
and that if it had grown pernicious it must have been 
owing to the guilty passions or to the evil sympathies 
of those who had used it. jN t o further explanation could 
be elicited, and the affair, which made a great noise at 
the time, remains a mystery to this hour. As for me, 
I lost an amiable and valued friend, for the Marquise 

de Br-, either through fear of the ridicule which 

attached to the adventure, or from memory of the pain 
which she had suffered, could never endure me to 
approach her after that. She would not even grant me 
an interview in order to express my regrets at the 



A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


129 


strange accident which had happened. She avoided me 
when by chance we met in public, scarcely even retum- 
ing my salutation, but by a cold and formal acknow¬ 
ledgment. She refused all the efforts of our mutual 
friends at effecting a reconciliation, and, wearied with 
my importunities (for I really felt anxious to do away 
the unjust impression), she ended by returning my 
letters of apologies and supplications unopened.” 

The marquise carried the mark of this adventure to 
her grave, in the shape of a long, narrow scar, which 
all the art of the coiffeur could not disguise. The 
corner of one of her exquisitely traced eyebrows, too, had 
been torn off, and never grew again ; hut she replaced it 
with a peculiar contrivance, which she wore there 
for ever after. The sequel is told by Prince Talleyrand 
in the following words, which sufficiently indicate the 
reality of the whole story:—“The girandole ear-drops 
of emerald and topaz she not only wore no more, hut 
had the cruelty to bestow upon her maid, who adorned 
herself with them at the next Opera hall, whither she 
was sent by her mistress to intriguer me, while the 
lovely marquise replaced them at times with long- 
pendants of snowy pearl, emblem of innocence and sim¬ 
plicity, and I soon began to observe, -\Vith bitterness, 
i 


130 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


that, on these occasions, whether I proposed opera, 
hall, or play, Boufflers always had some ‘particular 
engagement’ which prevented him from joining our 
party.” 



CHAPTER VII. 


Story of tlie Diamond Necklace.—The Jeweller Boehmer and 
his great Work.—Cardinal Prince de Rohan.—A Sham’s 
Laboratory.—Strange Dialogue.—Countess de Lamotte.—The 
Baroness D’Oliva.—Curious Account of her Introduction into 
the Conspiracy.—Supposed Sale of Boehmer’s Chef-d'auvre. 
—Its Delivery and Disappearance.—Arrest and Trial of the 
Conspirators. 


eVpV^VpHEH Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette com- 
jySvro menced their hopeless task of governing 
France, the national exchequer was exhausted, the 
people were starving, the seeds of revolution had 
already been sown by hundreds of pamphleteers, and 
revolt and civil war appeared inevitable. All society 




132 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


was in travail, and a great national upheaving of the 
people was at hand. The ungovernable will of an 
oppressed and down-trodden nation was about to burst 
like a volcano, destroying and overturning everything in 
its course. Happy would that young King and Queen 
have been had patriots, not sham politicians, been at 
hand to counsel and advise them how to direct aright 
that mighty power—“a people’s will.” 

The only expedient the genius of M. Calonne, the 
Controller of the State, could devise to' replenish the 
exhausted treasury, and thereby to appease the anxious 
inquiries of the King and Queen, was the creation of 
loan upon loan. By this means he appeared to sustain 
the national fabric, although at a cost of something like 
50,000/. sterling daily, and by bland smiles and fair 
words succeeded in winning the applause and approba¬ 
tion of the court, and those whose prosperity had for its 
foundation the flourishing condition of the Stock Ex¬ 
change. Unfortunately such a state of things could not 
long continue; loans would not make up deficits: so 
when the national credit, as well as the national trea¬ 
sury, was exhausted, Monsieur Calonne could find no 
better road out of the difficulties into which he had 
steered the ship of state, than by suggesting the 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


133 


assembling of a convocation of notables—a course that 
had not been adopted for one hundred and sixty years 
previously. 

It was during these years when France was in a 
tottering condition from financial exhaustion, that the 
affair of the Diamond Necklace brought the State to the 
very -s erge of ruin, into which it was destined sooner or 
later to tumble. The history of this world-famed neck¬ 
lace is to be found distributed in the Memoirs of 
Madame Campan, the Abbe Greorgel, the State papers 
referring to the Affaire du Collier, also in the fourth 
volume of Carlyle’s Miscellaneous Essays. The latter 
of these works we have chiefly consulted, and are 
greatly indebted to that distinguished author and critic 
for much of the information contained in these pages. 

During the early and middle part of the eighteenth 
century there flourished in Paris a celebrated court 
jeweller, M. Boehmer. He had acquired considerable 
wealth and celebrity by the prosecution of his calling, 
but still he cherished an ambition to produce a work 
which should establish his fame. The idea once formed, 
his whole life became devoted to its realization. The 
work was to consist of a necklace of diamonds, which 


134 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


should eclipse everything of the kind that had been pre¬ 
viously made: so that whilst all beholders envied the 
neck which it encircled, the maker, Monsieur Boehmer, 
should be regarded as the most wonderful of court 
jewellers. The design was furnished by M. Taunay. 
According to Madame Campan, the jewel was originally 
intended for the Countess du Barry; but be this as it 
may, the work was not finished till some years after her 
retirement from court, consequent upon the King’s 
death. This appears to favour the supposition that her 
retirement was more abrupt than had been anticipated, 
and that had events been couleur de rose, the countess’s 
would have been the first neck arrayed in the chef- 
d’oeuvre of M. Boehmer. 

Plans and models having been prepared, and the 
costliest diamonds procured, the happy jeweller rejoiced 
in the completion of his work, the cost of which was 
estimated at 90,000/. sterling. A jewel so costly 
was only fit for the neck of some Sultana ; none 
such, however, could be found with sufficient money at 
command to purchase it. It had been offered to Marie 
Antoinette and declined. The condition of her starving 
people demanded bread, not stones, which could only 
dazzle the eye without satisfying their hungry cravings. 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


135 


At length a purchaser was found in the person of the 
Cardinal Prince de Rohan. 

The Cardinal de Rohan was Bishop of Strasbourg, 
and had been sent as ambassador to the court of 
Maria Theresa to negotiate the marriage of her daughter 
with the Dauphin of France. "Whilst performing this 
delicate service for his royal master, he became 
enamoured of the beautiful Princess. She had, how¬ 
ever, learnt from her mother to dislike and despise the 
red-coated cardinal; nevertheless, she was obliged to 
travel to France under his protection. On their arrival 
he was called upon to supply the place of his uncle, the 
cardinal archbishop, and to support the trembling young 
Dauphiness on her first public appearance in France. 
During his residence at Strasbourg, he had made the 
acquaintance of Cagliostro ; also, it would appear, he 
had acquired an ascendancy over the pretty, witty, 
designing Countess Cagliostro; but as the friendship 
subsisting between the sham doctor and, as he may 
with truth be styled, the sham cardinal, suffered no 
diminution in consequence, we may infer that the fair 
medium was on this, as on other similar occasions, used 
as a means to work out the problem of her husband’s 
future destiny. From some cause or other, or, perhaps 


136 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


it would be better to say, from a combination of causes, 
the Cardinal failed to impress the fair young Princess 
in his favour. There was about him an expression from 
which she instinctively recoiled. Upon one occasion, 
returning from Vienna, he brought a letter from 
Maria Theresa, but the Dauphiness would not see him, 
and ordered the letter to be sent to her; while her 
husband briefly signified that he “ would be asked for 
when wanted.” 

Cardinal de Bohan had not sufficient faith in the Cod 
whom he professed to serve to bear up against the 
despair which, under circumstances so trying, filled his 
heart. A strong idea took possession of his mind that 
the Queen might at length be brought to recall her 
decision, and with this idea he determined at all risks to 
see and be recognized by her Majesty, He accordingly 
stationed himself in the gardens of Trianon, where the 
chariot containing the Queen passed him by : he was re¬ 
cognized certainly, but only to be laughed at. In this 
dilemma he consulted Cagliostro, then practising his art 
in Paris. The Cardinal was, in the first instance, induced 
to consult the great Sham on account of his pecuniary 
embarrassments, since Cagliostro pretended to have 
studied alchemy so satisfactorily as to have succeeded 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


137 


in the enterprise which all men of his calling were then 
engaged in, viz. the transmutation of metals. Intro¬ 
duced into his laboratory, while the furnaces were in 
full operation and the crucible being filled with amal¬ 
gams, De Rohan was brought to believe that he wit¬ 
nessed the conversion of the baser metals into the true 
auriferous ore. Supplied with the money he needed, 
the Cardinal was about to take his leave, but Cagliostro 
had already penetrated his secret, i.e. the unholy pas¬ 
sion he entertained for Marie Antoinette. The know¬ 
ledge of this fact at once placed the Cardinal in Caglios¬ 
tro’s power—a power which, as we shall shortly see, 
was exerted to some purpose over his clerical dupe. 

De Rohan, by way of exhibiting his gratitude to the 
man who in so marvellous a manner had replenished 
his purse with gold to the amount of a hundred thou¬ 
sand crowns, was warm in his expressions of gratitude 
and promises of future assistance if in his power. 
“ Prince,” said the Sham, “ since your Highness pro¬ 
poses to serve me, I would ask you of what nature 
might those services be, which your Eminence proposes 
to render me?” 

“ Why, in the first place, my credit at court.” 


138 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


“ My lord, my lord, you know too well that that 
credit is much shaken; in fact, I should almost as soon 
accept the Duke de Choiseul’s, and yet he has not perhaps 
a fortnight to hold his place. Take my word for it, 
Prince, and as far as credit goes, depend on mine. There 
is good and sterling gold. Every time that your Eminence 
is in want of any, let me know the night before, and 
you shall have as much as you like. And with gold, 
my lord, cannot all things he procured ? ” “ Not 

all,” murmured the Cardinal, sinking into the grade of 
a protege, and no longer even making an effort to regain 
that of patron. 

“ Ah, true ! I forgot that your lordship desires some¬ 
thing more than gold—something more precious than 
all the riches of the earth. But in this, science cannot 
assist you; it is the province of magic. My lord, say 
the word, and the alchemist is ready to become the 
magician.” “Thank you, sir; but I want for nothing 
more—I desire nothing further,” said the Cardinal, in 
a desponding voice. 

Balsamo approached him. 

“ My lord,” said he, “a prince, young, handsome, 
ardent, rich, and bearing the name of Bohan, ought not 
to make such a reply to a magician,” 


A. BOOK ABOUT 8HAM8. 


139 


“ Why not, sir?” 

“Because the magician reads his heart, and knows 
to the contrary.” 

“ I wish for nothing—I desire nothing,” repeated 
the Cardinal, almost terrified. 

“I should have thought, on the contrary, that your 
Eminence’s wishes were such as you dared not avow, 
even to yourself, since they are those of a king! ” 

The Cardinal started at this open mention of the 
secret which he thought lay hidden in the innermost 
recesses of his heart, not even suspected by another. 

Cagliostro possessed at least one great talent which 
no doubt mainly contributed to his success, as it enabled 
him to half discern the Cardinal’s secret, and by 
assuming a complete knowledge of it, to bring the 
owner under his power. This was the faculty of 
rapidly and accurately reading human nature. Herein 
he was more than a match for the Cardinal, who at 
length confessed the passion that was burning within 
him, and inquired of Cagliostro whether he could tell if 
this love was the love of a madman or not. The great 
Sham promised to give proof upon this subject if the 
Cardinal could furnish him with something which had 


140 A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 

been placed in contact with the person who inspired his 
passion. A lock of hair was all that was stipulated for, 
and this the Cardinal promised to obtain. 

The ringlet was procured through the connivance of 
one of the Queen’s waiting-maids, and submitted to 
Cagliostro—who professed to possess a power of second- 
sight, by which, with the aid of his wife, whom he used 
as a medium, he pretended to foretell coming events. 
Lorenza was able to discern that the hair had been 
taken from an illustrious head, and that it belonged to 
one who was married to a husband she did not love. 
Cagliostro communicated to the impatient Cardinal that 
the medium had said there was room for hope. “ It 
said so—did it ? ” exclaimed the Prince. 

“ Draw your own conclusion,” observed Cagliostro. 
“ The oracle said that this woman did not love her 
husband.” 

“A thousand thanks,” exclaimed the Cardinal; “ I 
never can repay you,’ ’ And in a transport of joy he took 
his leave, to ponder over the words of a designing- 
woman, prompted by an artful impostor. 

Although it may appear incredible that a man of 
the Cardinal de Rohan’s pretensions should have had 


A 1500K AliOtTT SHAMS. 


141 


his senses so completely addled by an impudent 
mountebank ; it is nevertheless an historical fact, 
involving as it did the Queen’s honour, happiness, 
and even her life. 

For two years the Cardinal lived upon the promises of 
Cagliostro, passing his time alternately between Palis 
and Saveme, and utterly neglected by the Queen. 
Although forty-nine years old, and with the snows 
of winter beginning to whiten his brow, he yet clung 
to his foolish passion with the tenacity of youth. 
During the whole of this time, M. Boehmer had been 
endeavouiing to effect the sale of his necklace. Tor¬ 
mented by importunate creditors, he at length managed 
to invade the Queen’s retirement, and flinging himself 
at her feet implored her with passionate tears to do one 
of two things : either to buy his necklace, or to grant 
him her royal permission to drown himself in the Seine ; 
but her Majesty indicated a third course which was 
open to him, namely, to take his necklace to pieces— 
adding in a tone of rebuke, that if he desired to drown 
himself, he needed not her permission to do so. 

About this time the Countess de Lamotte appeared 
upon the scene. She was an irregular off-shoot of 


142 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


royalty, tracing her genealogy back to Henry II. Her 
father, the last male descendant of the house of Valois, 
had fallen into dissolute habits, and literally died of 
starvation in the Hotel Dieu. Jeanne de Salois (after¬ 
wards the Countess de Lamotte) was thrown at the age 
of twelve years, together with a younger sister and 
brother, upon the streets of Paris. Attracting the 
attention of one of the ladies of the court, she was for¬ 
tunate enough to obtain a pension of thirty pounds per 
annum from the public purse, and subsequent employ¬ 
ment as a dressmaker in the court. At length she mar¬ 
ried M. Lamotte, a gendarme of no particular pretensions, 
except such as might arise from his relations with the 
confraternity of swindlers and black-legs. Pour years 
after his marriage, Lamotte laid down his arms and 
donned the character of civilian, assuming as well the 
title of Count de Lamotte. While the husband pushed 
his fortune at the gambling-tables in the subterranean 
purlieus of Paris, the Countess his wife took a garret 
at the Belle Image at Versailles, there to await the 
course of events. She had often heard during her 
gossip ings at court of Monsieur Boehm or and his 
celebrated necklace, as well as of Cardinal de Bohan’s 
insane passion; and she conceived the idea that she 
might improve the occasion for herself by means of 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


143 


false personations, and by inditing letters purporting to 
come from the Queen. The Cardinal had for years been 
the dupe of Cagliostro, and had learnt from him to 
believe in the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, the 
power of animal magnetism over the souls of men, and 
other atheistical doctrines with which the world then 
abounded; and he was thus prepared to give credence 
to any mysterious tale the Countess de Lamotte might 
invent, which seemed to favour the success of his pas¬ 
sion. Early in January, 1784, the Countess paid her 
first visit to the Cardinal, and, under the sworn seal of 
secrecy, informed him that she had worked a way to 
the ear of the Queen herself. The design of the 
Countess was to unite in one common bond all the 
persons we have here introduced. Thus the court 
jeweller had a marvellous necklace to sell, which the 
Queen had prudently declined to purchase whilst so 
many of her subjects were starving. The Cardinal de 
Bohan was in love with the Queen, and his passion it 
was one of the designs of the conspiracy to foment by 
means of forged autographs pretending to emanate 
from her Majesty. As the affair progressed it became 
necessary to procure the services of a new character to 
personate the Queen in her supposed secret interviews 
with De Bohan. 


144 


A HOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


This role being undertaken by the self-styled Baroness 
D’ Oliva—a woman bearing a strong resemblance to 
Marie Antoinette, it was next made known to the 
Cardinal, by means of the forgeries and persona¬ 
tions of Lamotte, that the Queen desired to purchase 
the necklace, but was unable owing to the poverty and 
meanness of her husband. De Rohan was but too 
ready and willing to mortgage his estates, and render 
himself liable for the amount if the Queen sought his 
assistance—a little difficulty which was easily overcome 
by the counterfeiting hand of Lamotte. So the terms 
were arranged to the satisfaction of M. Boehmer, who 
was referred to De Rohan, and the latter in turn 
sought an interview with the Queen, in order to pre¬ 
sent her with the casket containing the necklace. 
The Queen, as it was supposed, granted the Cardinal 
a. private meeting, and received from his hands the 
precious casket, which she directed her attendant to 
follow her with to her apartment. Who this attendant 
was, what became of the necklace and those engaged 
in the plot, as well as what led to its detection, it is 
now necessary to relate. 

The Countess de Lamotte, as we have said, contrived 
to make it appear to De Rohan that the Queen desired 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


145 


to possess the necklace, and would even pay for it by 
instalments, but feared to acquaint her husband with 
her desire. It was also given out that her Majesty de¬ 
clined to appear in the business herself, but would be 
grateful to any one to transact it secretly in her stead. 
Still delays seemed to threaten the success of the negotia¬ 
tion, owing, as the Countess de Lamotte averred, to the 
Queen’s unacquaintance with business. At last the 
following course was suggested :—M. Boehmer was to 
write out his terms, which were as follows:—Sixteen 
hundred thousand livres to be paid in five instalments ; 
the first, six months after the date of the agreement, 
and the others every three months till all the money 
was paid. 

To this agreement, M. Boehmer and the Cardinal 
attached their signatures as consenting to the contract. 
The Countess de Lamotte pretended to. take the paper 
to the Queen for her signature. After great difficulty 
and many days pretended to be spent in overcoming the 
royal scruples, the document was brought back, with the 
following note attached:— “Bon. Marie Antoinette de 
France .” It only remained now for M. Boehmer to 
hand over his necklace to the Cardinal, who gave him a 
receipt for the same, and then sought to transfer the 

j 


146 


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treasure to her Majesty’s safe custody. De Rohan went 
to the apartment of the Countess de Lamotte the night 
after the bargain was concluded with Boehmer, followed 
by an attendant bearing the casket, who, after deposit¬ 
ing it, withdrew. Shortly afterwards, according to 
arrangement, the Queen (D’Oliva) entered, attended by 
her valet, and the Cardinal presented to her the casket 
containing the necklace : it was received by the valet, 
who immediately retired with a respectful bow, bearing 
his precious string of eighty thousand pounds’ worth 
of diamonds. 

The individual who acted the part of valet, as our 
readers may easily guess, was no other than the Count de 
Lamotte—who at once hurried with his treasure to 
England, in order, no doubt, to fulfil the advice of the 
Queen to M. Boehmer: “ D^pecez votre collier.” 
Lamotte’s career had only just begun, and we shall 
have an opportunity of seeing more of him by-and-by. 

The necklace having now been disposed of, and the 
Queen supposed to have placed herself under an obliga¬ 
tion to De Rohan, the Cardinal became impatient 
because her Majesty did not openly receive him at 
court. But the Countess Lamotte showed herself equal 
to this emergency. The 3rd July was close at hand, 


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147 


when M. Boehmer was to receive his first instalment of 
320,000 livres. Cagliostro was in Paris, and to him 
the Countess applied for advice. Pifteen hundred 
pounds was all that could he squeezed out of the 
Count de Lamotte, although one jeweller, named Jefferys, 
of Fleet Street, London, had already purchased diamonds 
of him to the amount of 10,000/.—diamonds which, the 
pseudo-count assured Mr. Jeffery s, had been given to 
his wife by Marie Antoinette. 

On the 19th July M. Boehmer was informed that it 
was not convenient for the Queen to pay the 320,000 
livres, but he is requested to accept the 1,500/.. as 
interest. M. Boehmer declined to accede to the pro¬ 
posal, and threatened to seek redress in a court of jus¬ 
tice. This was an awkward dilemma for the Cardinal, 
who stamped and raved, comforting himself, however, 
with the conviction that the “ Queen had committed 
herself, and that she should be brought to terms.” 

July 30th had come and gone, and Boehmer, almost 
maddened with fright, was driven hither and thither 
without any sign of the promised payment. He again 
intruded himself into the presence of the Queen, and 
his surprise and terror may be conceived when her 
Majesty declared to him, that so far from having had 


148 


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any transactions with the Cardinal de Rohan relative to 
the purchase of the necklace, she had not even seen it. 
Insanity mercifully saved poor Boehmer from a know¬ 
ledge of the fate of his necklace. 

On the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, 
the Cardinal de Rohan, as Grand-Almoner, had to lead 
the service which was to he celebrated on that day. He 
received a summons to the royal apartment, from 
whence, after a conference of unusual duration, he 
rejoined the nobility in the galleries at Versailles, wait¬ 
ing the arrival of the royal personages, for the service to 
commence. Instead of the King and Queen entering, 
the Minister of Police made his appearance, attended by 
the officer on guard, and arrested the Cardinal in the 
name of the King, and forthwith conveyed him to the 
Bastille. In the course of a few days he was followed 
by the Countess de Lamotte, the Baroness 1)’Oliva, and 
the Counts Cagliostro and Lamotte. Hot all Europe— 
scarcely all the world—could have furnished so con¬ 
summate a bevy of Shams as were thus lodged together 
under the roof of the state prison of France. 

Their trial lasted nine months. On its termination in 
May, 1786, De Rohan was exiled from the French 
court, and betook himself to Brussels, where, it is to be 


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149 


hoped, in later years he found leisure for a wise repen¬ 
tance. Cagliostro crossed over to England; and the 
Countess de Lamotte, being convicted as an impostor and 
swindler, was ordered to be confined in a mad-house, 
to be whipped, and to be branded with the letter Y on 
the back of each shoulder. At length she contrived to 
make her escape to London, where she published her 
lying Memoirs. Worn down by dissipation, anxiety, 
and poverty, she took refuge in a small lodging-house 
in Lambeth, where the law officers of the Crown 
followed her on another charge of robbery. To escape 
them she flung herself, or was thrown by her associates, 
from the window, to be borne thence to an unhonoured 
grave. 

The Count de Lamotte, after the death of his wife, 
returned to Paris, where he was again imprisoned in the 
Bastille. At the time of the September massacre, he 
was still in prison. It is reported by Maton that “at 
one o’clock on the morning of Monday, September 3, 
the gate leading to our quarters was opened. Pour men 
in uniform, holding each a naked sabre and blazing 
torch, mounted to our corridor, a turnkey showing the 
way, and entered a room close on ours, to investigate a 
box, which they broke open. This done, they halted 


150 


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in the gallery; and began interrogating one Cuissa, 
to know where Lamotte was; who, they said, under 
pretext of finding a treasure, which they should share 
in, had swindled one of them out of 300 livres, having 
asked him to dinner for that purpose. 

“ The wretched Cuissa, whom they had in their 
power, and who lost his life that night, answered, all 
trembling, that he remembered the fact well, but could 
not say what had become of the prisoner. Resolute to 
find this Lamotte and confront him with Cuissa, 
they ascended into other rooms, and made further rum¬ 
maging there; but apparently without effect, for they 
were heard to exclaim : ‘ Come search among the 

corpses, then ; for we must know what is become of 
him.’ Among those mangled human forms they found 
the object of their search; Lamotte was already mur¬ 
dered.” 

The pseudo-Baroness d’Oliva was acquitted, and 
subsequently married a man named Beausire, formerly 
a captain of the National Guard. Monsieur Beausire 
became a spy in the service of M. Boyenval; but having 
incurred the enmity of Fouquier Tinville, was, by his 
order, guillotined. The baroness, his widow, from 
this time sank out of public notice. 



CHAPTER Y 111. 

—O— 

Mystery of the Diamond Necklace still unexplained.—Curious 
Suspicion.—Ill-fated Procession.—Trial of Marie Antoinette. 
—Retrospect.—Her Journey to France .—A la Mort .—Strange 
Episode of the Revolution.—Progress of Ideas.—Absurd Cus¬ 
toms.—Effects produced by the Revolution. 

W HERE is not a little mystery still hanging over 
e jL the affair of the Diamond Necklace; not the 

least part of it being, that of the five hundred diamonds 
composing it, all brilliants of the first water, cut and 
worked in a peculiar manner, so as to admit of easy 
recognition, not one has yet been discovered by the 
dealers in such articles. AVe suppose this element of 
mystery is one of the causes that has made the story of 
this necklace always so exceptionally attractive. 







152 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


The following circumstances related by Prince Talley¬ 
rand, though confirmed and authenticated as referring 
to one of the oldest and most distinguished families in 
Prance at the time of the occurrence, has never, as far 
as we are aware, been satisfactorily explained. M. 
Talleyrand says : “ During the time I held the 
portefeuille of Foreign Affairs, I received a letter from 
our ambassador at one of the Northern courts, wherein 
he announced to me, with great excitement, the arrival 

at his court of the Count de M- and his wife. 

They had been presented by himself to the Sovereign ; 
for, although they might, strictly speaking, have been 
considered hnigres, not having returned to Prance 
during the reign of Napoleon, yet, as the Count was not 
at that time the head of his family, and had never med¬ 
dled in politics, he had a right to claim the protection 
of the ambassador of his country. The lady had chosen 
for her debut at court the occasion of a royal birthday, 
and she had made her appearance laden with all her 
jewels; and ‘upon her neck,’ wrote the Baron, ‘ she 
wore a necklace of the exact pattern of that, concerning 
which all Europe had been roused before the Revolution 
—that is to say, the only difference being, that the 
three scroll ornaments which are so remarkable, and to 
which I could swear as being the same, are held,by a 



A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


153 


chain of small rose diamonds instead of the riviere by 
which they were joined before. 

‘ ‘ The letter gave us all great diversion at the time, 
from the excitement in which it was written ; but the 
Emperor, to whom I of course communicated the fact, 
took it more gravely, and begged me to ask for a draw¬ 
ing of the necklace; which the ambassador found means 
to obtain, and which was seen to correspond with that 
preserved among the pieces du proces in the Archives. 
Moreover, on its being submitted to young Boehmer, he 
declared his full and entire conviction that the jewel 
was the same, from the remarkable circumstance of a 
mistake having occurred in the execution of the middle 
ornament, one side of the scroll containing two small 
diamonds more than the other, and which, he recol¬ 
lected, had much distressed his father, but which could 
never have been discovered save by a member of the 
trade. It was then remembered, and by the Emperor 
himself first of all, that the lady’s mother had been 
attached to the person of Marie Antoinette, and that she 
had retired from court and gone to reside abroad soon 
after the trial of Madame de Lamotte.” 

The Nemesis of wrong-doing is slow, but sure, in the 
execution of its decree; but rarely has history recorded 


154 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


anything so complete as the retribution in the instance 

of the persons concerned as dramatis persona in the plot 
we have just been relating:—One was banished from 
his country; a second, ruined and obliged to fly to 
England ; a third, escaped from a mad-house and 
thrown from the three-story window of a miserable 
house in Lambeth; a fourth, massacred, and his body 
buried amongst the corpses in the Bastille; a fifth, 
an outcast in the Palais Royal, having seen her husband 
led to the block as a felon ; and last, though saddest of 
all, a beautiful Queen (how little complicity soever she 
may have had in the plot) exposed to the malice of a 
lawless mob, and as a criminal convoyed to the place 
of public execution, there with her life to pay the 
terrible penalty of having been connected, though only 
in public suspicion, with such a fraternity of Shams. 

Four years after the trial of the Diamond Necklace 
conspirators, which all historians agree did the Queen 
and Royal Family of France incalculable damage, we 
find that on the 4th of May, 1789, their Majesties 
formed part of an important procession. The insurgents 
had forced themselves into Versailles, and compelled 
the King and his household to return with them to 
Paris, in order to attend the assembly of the States 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


155 


General. Had the King only possessed courage, the 
time had come for him to turn his back for ever upon 
France and Frenchmen; hut unfortunately for him he 
did not do so, and the procession being formed, Louis 
■with his court brought up the rear: he appeared cheer¬ 
ful and full of hope, and was saluted with plaudits, as 
well as Keeker, his Minister. Kot so, however, the 

Queen; on whom hope seems to shine no more. “ Ill- 

fated Queen ! Her hair is already grey with care and 
trouble; her first-born son is dying; falsehood has 
ineffaceably soiled her name—ineffaceably while this 
generation lasts. Instead of Vive la Heine, voices 

insult her with Vive cV Orleans. Of her queenly 

beauty little remains, except its stateliness; not now 
gracious, but haughty, rigid, silently enduring. With 
a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no part, she 
resigns herself to a day she hoped never to have seen. 
Poor Marie Antoinette ; with thy quick noble instincts, 
vehement glancings, visions all too fitful, narrow for 
the work thou hast to do. 

‘ ‘ Oh, there are tears in store for thee; bitterest 
wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the 
heart of an Imperial Theresa’s daughter. Thou doomed 
one, shut thy eyes on the future ! 


156 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


11 And so, in stately procession, have passed the 
Elected of France: some towards honour and quick-fire 
consummation; most towards dishonour; not a few 
towards massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: 
all towards Eternity. 

“ On Monday, the 14th of October, 1793, a cause is 
pending in the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolu¬ 
tionary Court, such as those old stone walls never wit¬ 
nessed : the trial of Marie Antoinette. The once 
brightest of queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, 
stands here at Eouquier Tinville’s judgment-bar, an¬ 
swering for her life ! The indictment was delivered 
to her last night. To such changes of human fortune 
what words are adequate ? Silence alone is adequate. 

u Marie Antoinette, in this her utter abandonment 
and hour of extreme need, is not wanting to herself, 
the imperial woman. Her look, they say, as that 
hideous indictment was reading, continued calm; ‘ she 
was sometimes observed moving her fingers, as when 
one plays on the piano.’ You discern, not without 
interest, across that dim revolutionary bulletin itself, 
how she bears herself queenlike. Her answers are 
prompt, clear, often of laconic brevity; resolution, 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


157 


which has grown contemptuous without ceasing to he 
dignified, veils itself in calm words. After two days 
and two nights of interrogating, jury-charging, and 
other darkening of counsel, the result comes out: sen¬ 
tence of Death. ‘ Have you anything to say ? ’ The 
accused shook her head, without speech.” 

What a marked contrast to the royal procession twenty- 
three years ago, when the young Archduchess left her 
mother’s side to link her fortunes with the heir-apparent 
to the throne of Trance! Weber was an eye¬ 
witness of the departure of the Princess from 
Vienna, and thus describes the scene:—“The whole 
city crowded out; at first with a sorrow which was 
silent. When she appeared you saw her sunk back 
into her carriage, her face bathed'in tears, hiding her 
eyes now with her handkerchief, now with her hands, 
several times putting out her head to see yet again this 
palace of her father’s, whither she was to return no 
more. She motioned her regret, her gratitude to the 
good nation, which was crowding here to bid her fare¬ 
well. Then arose not only tears, but piercing cries, on 
all sides. Men and women alike abandoned themselves 
to such expression of their sorrow. It was an audible 
sound of wail in the streets and avenues of Vienna. 


158 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


The last courier that followed her disappeared, and the 
crowd melted away.” 

“ The young imperial maiden of fifteen has now 
become a worn, discrowned widow of thirty-eight; grey 
before her time : this is the last procession. A few 
minutes after the trial ended, the drums were beating to 
arms in all the sections : at sunrise the armed force were 
on foot, cannons getting placed at the extremities of the 
bridges, in the squares, crossways, all along from the 
Palais cle Justice to the Place de la Involution. By ten 
o’clock numerous patrols were circulating in the streets; 
thirty thousand foot and horse being drawn up under 
arms. At eleven, Marie Antoinette was brought out. 
She had on an undress of pique blanc: she was led to 
the place of execution in the same manner as an ordi¬ 
nary criminal, bound on a cart; accompanied by a Con¬ 
stitutional priest in lay dress ; escorted by numerous 
detachments of infantry and cavalry. These, and the 
double row of troops all along her road, she appeared to 
regard with indifference. On her countenance there 
was visible neither abashment nor pride. 

“ To the cries of ‘Vive la Bjpublique,’ and ‘Down 
with Tyranny,’ which attended her all the way, she 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


159 


seemed to pay no heed. She spoke little to her con¬ 
fessor. The tricolour streamers on the house-tops occu¬ 
pied her attention, in the Streets du Roule and Saint 
Honore ; she also noticed the inscriptions on the house- 
fronts. 

“ On reaching the Place de la Revolution, her looks 
turned towards the Jardin National, whilom Tuileries ; 
her face at that moment gave signs of lively emotion. 

‘ ‘ She mounted the scaffold with courage enough; at 
a quarter past twelve, her head fell. The executioner 
showed it to the people, amid universal, long-continued 
cries of ‘ Vive la Rjpublique ! ’ 

“ This brave woman only survived the fate of her 
husband about nine months. During her trial, and 
after her condemnation, she bore herself right queenly, 
and looked forward with joy to the termination of her 
sufferings, and the near approach of an immortal crown.” 

Among the many tragic incidents which marked the 
career of Marie Antoinette, we cannot forbear giving 
the following, which is taken from Colmache’s Life of 
Talleyrand ;— 

“ One of the most striking examples of the vanity of 
human wishes may be found in the history of Eugene 


160 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


de B-, who had been my fellow salver-bearer during 

the visit of the Bishop of Bordeaux to St. Sulpice. This 
was considered an office of honour, and bestowed upon 
the two best wranglers of the season. My companion 
was one of the handsomest young men I ever beheld j 
tall and dark, with all the fire of the south in his black 
eye and swarthy complexion, and the impress of high 
descent stamped upon his features. He was the natural 
son of a nobleman holding a high office about the court, 
and might hope through this channel to rise to the 
loftiest dignity and honour in the Church. It was not 
known who his mother was, but it was whispered 
amongst us that she must have been either a Jewess or 
Bohemian—a belief to which his singular and chiselled 
features gave rise. He was of a proud, impassioned 
character, violent and indomitable; one with whom his 
teachers and those in authority were obliged to pause 
before they ventured to rush into open warfare. Neither 
punishment nor reprimand had ever been able to tame 
his violent, irascible nature, and, on more than one 
occasion, had it not been for the great honour which 
his learning and acquirements conferred on the estab¬ 
lishment, he would have been expelled. 


“His fiery soul revolted at the idea of entering the 



A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


161 


Church. I have seen him shudder with disgust as he 
donned the black serge dress which denoted his calling, 
and absolutely refuse to walk in his rank in the proces¬ 
sions, which, at certain festivals, formed part of the 
ceremonies of the day. His dreams were all of a 
military life and military glory. He told me himself, 
that, proud as he was, he had knelt to his father to beg 
him to suffer him to embrace the profession of arms. 
He would have been a knight of Malta—a volunteer— 
even a private soldier—-anything, so long as he might 
be permitted to follow the bent of his inclinations, and 
join the army; but his father had said coldly, that his 
interest in the army was all swallowed up by his other 
sons, and besides, that he disapproved greatly of this 
clashing of interests between young men of the same 
name, who yet bore it under circumstances so different; 
that he would not countenance any change of profession; 
that he might rely on his protection so long as he con¬ 
tinued obedient to his commands, and that a fortune, 
such as would satisfy his most ardent ambition, awaited 
him on the completion of his studies, if he would remain 
content in the calling which his relatives had chosen 
for him. 

* ‘ From such reasoning there was no appeal, and poor 

K 


162 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


Eugene remained at the Seminaire , cursing his fate, and 
nursing his bitterness against the existing order of 
things, which thus left him helpless and without defence, 
the slave of another’s will, to follow the very calling he 
so much despised. You will readily believe that, with 
these sentiments, he was one of those who yielded the 
most readily to the influence of the new doctrines which 
the philosophers of that day had begun to preach with 
so much success. He had frequently been severely 
reprimanded, and sometimes even harshly punished 
for his undisguised approval of the new tenets; for 
among his class-fellows he sought not to conceal his 
sentiments, but proclaimed aloud his contempt for the 
aristocracy, his hatred of the oppressors of the people, 
his opinion that the King would one day be taken to 
task for his weak administration; and, above all, his 
tongue waged loudest war against the Queen, poor 
Marie Antoinette. 

“He left the Semimire with these feelings still 
existing; he was much younger than myself, and I lost 
sight of him for some time; I only heard. accidentally 
that he had been appointed to serve one of the chapels 
of Notre Dame, merely while awaiting a vacancy to 
occur in some rich prebend or fat abbey, to which his 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


163 


father might have credit to get him appointed. Mean¬ 
while, the Revolution broke out, and Eugene became 
free to take the path from which he had been forcibly 
excluded while dependent on his father’s will. Of course, 
after what I knew of his character, it did not in the 
least surprise me to learn that he had thrown his frock 
aux orties , or that he had chosen to enter the army; 
but what really did surprise me to a great degree was 
the astounding information which was given me by his 

brother the Marquis de B-, that he had attached 

himself to the broken remnants of the gards du corps ; 
that he had followed them most pertinaciously as a 
volunteer; that he had twice been severely wounded in 
defending the Queen from the fury of the mob; and 
that he was the individual who had carried the Dauphin, 
at the very risk and peril of his life, across the Allee 
des Eeuillans, on the day of the memorable attack! 

“ ‘ And what became of him after this ? ’ inquired I 
of his brother, already in my own mind anticipating the 
answer, for there were but few of those who had made 
themselves the least conspicuous in the like manner 
who escaped. 

“ ‘ "VVhy, he was of course arrested,’ replied the 
marquis, ‘ and thrown into prison, but was discharged 



164 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


on suspicion of madness, although he was not more mad 
than I am. He remained in Paris without seeking 
concealment during the hottest period of the terreur , 
and by a most extraordinary chance, was suffered to go 
unharmed, doubtless protected by the same suspicion of 
insanity. My father and myself had joined the armee 
de Conde, and would then have been glad of the 
acquisition of such a bold, brave spirit to the cause. 
With the view of his passing the frontier, we succeeded, 
by dint of the greatest privations, in raising a sum of 
money, which we had conveyed to him. He thanked 
us sincerely, but said he could not desert h is post nor join 
us till his task was fulfilled ! With alarm we heard of 
him again at the execution of the Queen, when he made 
himself remarkable by his conduct at the scaffold. It 
appears that he threw himself beneath the wheels of the 
cart in which that unfortunate princess was transported 
to her doom, and narrowly escaped being torn to pieces 
by the infuriated poissardes for his loud and outrageous 
denunciations of their cruelty. He escaped, however, 
by his extreme good fortune once again, and we were 
once more appealed to for money to ‘ procure him a 
passage out of this horrid country,’ wrote he, ‘where 
neither innocence nor beauty could find favour in the 
sight of men more savage and cruel than the beasts of 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


165 


the field.’ He refused to tell us in what manner he 
had disposed of the immense sum we had already, at 
great risk and inconvenience, sent him for the same 
purpose. Nevertheless, so great was our anxiety for 
his safety, and so great the desire that was felt through¬ 
out the whole armee de Conde for the acquisition of so 
valuable a member to its ranks, that a subscription was 
raised among us, poor as we were, and once more was 
the sum required despatched to this enfant prodigue , 
while we awaited in terror his safe arrival. 

“The marquis paused in his narrative, and then 
added, 4 And from that hour to this I have never beheld 
him, although he was living, until lately, not far from 
my own chateau in Bretagne.’ 

“ 4 Why, then, came he not to join you?’ said T. 

4 Did he escape from the country ? ’ 

4 4 4 He did.’ 

4 4 4 And what became of him after this?’ 

4 4 4 He became a monk,’ replied the marquis. 4 With 
the money we had raised at so much toil and pains, he 
left the country and went to Italy; but, after the 
Restoration, finding the rules of his order not severe 


166 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


enough, he returned to France, and entered the monas¬ 
tery of La Trappe. It is but a few months ago that I 
received a letter from the superior of the convent, 
informing me of my brother’s death, and mentioning 
that, although it was against the regulations of the 
order to admit of the bequeathing of any legacy to the 
laity, yet, in consideration of the marvellous piety of 
Brother Eugene, he was willing to forward to me, ac¬ 
cording to his dying wish, the bequest which he had 
made me. This letter was accompanied by a small 
sealed packet, which contained about a yard of narrow 
black ribbon, and a receipt in due form for a sum of 
money, which I instantly remembered was the exact 
amount despatched in the first instance to my brother 
from the armee de Conde! The 'writing was in the 
hand of Henri Samson , the executioner , signed by him, 
and bearing witness that the money had been received 

on delivery to the Citizen Eugene B- of the black 

ribbon which had bound the forehead and held back the 
hair of the Citoyenne Capet, on the morning of her 
execution. 

“ ‘It was all stained, and stiff with drops of blood. 
There were a few lines hurriedly written on the back 
of this paper by the hand of Eugene, wherein he said 



A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


167 


that he wished not to leave behind him the suspicion 
that he had disposed in an unworthy manner of the 
money which we had with so much difficulty raised. 
He desired I should become possessor of this relic, and 
that, if possible, it should be preserved in the family 
from generation to generation. He then merely added 
that he felt sure, from the knowledge of my sentiments, 
that I should cast no reproach upon his memory for 
having spent the sum in the acquisition of this treasure 
—this memorial of one who, from having been a martyr 
upon earth, was now a saint in heaven.’ ” 

The death of Marie Antoinette carries us to that point 
in the history of the French Revolution, which formed 
a turning point in the reign of the Shams. It is not 
our desire to follow to its close that succession of events 
which ended in the final overthrow’ of Hapoleon the 
First, and the elevation to the throne of the citizen- 
king, Louis Philippe. In the interval which elapsed be¬ 
tween the death of Marie Antoinette and the election of 
Louis Philippe, many and important changes took place. 
The citizen-king was not, as formerly, chosen, by the 
grace of God, King of France, but by the will of the 
people, “ King of the French.” A marvellous change 
is included in the alteration of title and mode of elec- 


168 A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 

tion. The old French kingship expired with the death 
of Louis XVI., never again to be revived. It broke 
down, not because the people had become wearied of 
rule, but because they had ceased to believe in the 
Shams by whom they had been so long misruled. 

Not only France, but the whole world, had become 
changed, and much that had seemed strong and vigorous 
was fast sinking into decay. On the other side of the 
Atlantic a new light had begun to dawn : a Congress had 
assembled in Pennsylvania, and men of all nations and 
creeds were rushing thither to raise the standard of the 
star-spangled banner, and to inaugurate the birth of a 
new democracy. How great a contrast does this new 
order of things present to that described by Carlyle, 
who says: “ Time was when men could, of a given man, 
by nourishing and decorating him with fit appliance to 
the due pitch, make themselves a king, almost as bees 
do; and what was still more to the purpose, loyally 
obey him when made. The man so nourished and 
decorated, thenceforth named royal, to implicitly obey 
(was to be) called loyal.” So firmly had these two 
ideas grown up as the only ones necessary to constitute 
a sound government, that when Louis XIV. was 
remonstrated with for too great an interference in the 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


169 


affairs of State, lie silenced all inquiring spirits with 
the exclamation of “ L’Etat c’est moi.” 

Upon a certain occasion the old Abbe Sieves quitted 
the Cathedral of Chartres and repaired to Paris, to ask 
and obtain an answer to the three following questions: 
—“ What is the Third Estate (i.e. the people) ? Answer: 
Everything.—Question : What has it hitherto been in 
our form of Government ? Answer : Nothing.—Ques¬ 
tion : What does it want ? Answer: To become some¬ 
thing.’ ’ 

While the good Abbe was propounding these plain 
matters of fact, the nobility were engaged discussing 
their supposed grievances. They presented a solemn 
memorial to the King, in which they urged that “if 
such visionary sentiments as those enunciated by the 
Abbe Sieyes were listened to, the privileges of the 
nobility and monarchy, of the Church and State, were 
all in danger.” 

In after years, when this great struggle of the French 
Revolution was ended, and men began to understand 
the lesson they had learnt under such hard task-masters, 
Mirabeau uttered these words:—“Above all things, my 
friend, slight not public opinion. Listen with open ears 


170 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


to public clamour;—for remember the voice of the 
people is the voice of God.” 

Instead of listening to the voice of the people, which 
gave warning over and over again of the danger that 
threatened the State, the nobles, who with the King 
then constituted the “State,” when not actually en¬ 
gaged in plundering and tyrannizing over the people, 
were given up to all sorts of foolishness in the way of 
dress, the extremes of etiquette, &c., which caused 
them to be regarded alternately with abhorrence and 
contempt. 

ft 

One of the absurd customs prevalent at the time was 
to send a little note (petit billet) of inquiry every morn¬ 
ing to the person beloved, who was expected to send a 
written reply. M. Colmache says : “I was once 
thoughtless enough to rally a lady upon this cus¬ 
tom, when she replied, angrily, ‘Monsieur, although 
Monsieur le Comte and myself may not choose to live 
together, yet our mutual position, and the rank we both 
hold in society, prevent our enjoying the privilege of 
dispensing with the common customs and formalities of 
the circles in which we have both been bred. In 
renouncing all idea of love for each other, we have not 
renounced good breeding.’ The same ceremonial 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


171 


billet was, according to custom, sent to Talleyrand 
every morning by the Princess, whose story in connec¬ 
tion with Cagliostro has already been told, although he 
never encouraged her absurdity by sending a written 
answer. 

“One evening the Princess had retired earlier than 
usual, and, shortly after, just as the company was 
breaking up, a note was handed to the Prince by 
her page. We were all rather alarmed at first, 
fearing that she might have been seized with illness ; 
but presently the billet was handed about amid roars of 
laughter ; there was nought to fear; it ran thus: ‘ Cher 
Prince—How are you this morning ? I myself am far 
from well, having passed a wretched night, although 
when I did sleep, I dreamed of you, which was some 
little consolation amid all my agitation and restlessness.’ 
The note bore the morrow’s date, and had been delivered 
by the careless servant some twelve or fourteen hours 
too soon! Upon inquiry, it proved to be the habit of 
the Princess to write these little billets over-night, to 
avoid being disturbed in the morning; they were laid 
on her toilet-table, whence the servant had taken the one 
in question, without inquiry and without reflection.” 

These and many Similar absurdities were swept away 


172 


X HOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


by the Revolution ; which, if it caused many hardships, 
did at the same time show men a more useful career 
than that followed during the heyday of the Pompa¬ 
dours, the Du Barrys, the Cardinals de Rohan and 
Abbe Georgels. Shams, like other evils, still continue, 
and men are as ready as ever to cheat and be cheated ; 
but such a career, as history teaches us, is sure to bring 
misery to the deceived, and sooner or later ruin to the 
deceivers. In no instance has it proved otherwise in 
relation to those we have already considered, and 
further investigation would but confirm this result. 



CHAPTER IX. 
O 


The Age of Reason.—Vincent Priessnitz.—Dr. and Mrs. Hahne¬ 
mann.—Helen Berkeley’s account of her visit to them.—The 
Quack Doctor.—The Dispensary .—The Legal Profession.— 
Religious Shams. 


W IIE French Revolution swept away the follies 
JjL of Alchemy, Xecromancy, Astrology*, and many 
of the old-world forms of imposture; hut men at the 
same time gave up worshipping (tod, and took to wor¬ 
shipping science and reason instead: so that every new 
theory required to be built upon some sort of scientific 




174 


A HOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


basis ; the teachings of the Fathers in Physic as well as 
in Eeligion and Politics, no longer retaining the confi¬ 
dence of the public. "We find as a natural consequence 
that novel systems were introduced in the treatment of 
diseases; and being trumpeted forth with the loudest 
scientific pretensions, secured hosts of believers. For it 
was the age of reason, which it is our firm conviction 
is often an exceedingly delusive faculty. Take for 
instance any of the opinions which for a time governed 
mankind : Manichoeism, Arianism, Donatism—had the 
followers of these no reason for their belief: and does 
not the reason of Mohammedans point to a belief in 
their prophet, and of the Mormons to a firm trust in 
theirs ? 

We will give you a Catholic, a Protestant, High 
Church or Low Church, a Calvinist, and a Unitarian, 
all equally honest, educated, intelligent and reasonable, 
and you must certainly marvel at the widely different 
goals to which their reason leads each of them. 
Their reason told the vast majority of the .lews that 
Christ was a devil ; and at that time we have no 
hesitation in believing there lived men among them as 
keen, clever, and intelligent as any among ourselves 
now. Therefore, as we have said, it is our firm convic- 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


175 


tion that in the matter of all highest belief this mere 
human faculty of reason is not to be depended upon, and 
often serves only as the barometer to gauge the ten¬ 
dency of the will, unless when moored to some 
immovable holdfast beyond man’s visible horizon. On 
this principle we may account for the delusions into 
which history shows that the worshippers of mere 
reason have ever been betrayed. The rejection of old 
beliefs by the Trench people opened the door as it were 
for new systems ; men’s reason rather than their 
imagination had to be appealed to, and everything was 
required to have a smack of science for its foundation. 
Tree-thinking and religious cant took the place of 
superstition and priestcraft in religion, and water and 
globules took the place of Mesmerism and the cantha- 
radic tincture. 

The great water-curer was Vincent Priessnitz, of 
Grafenberg—the son of a small farmer in Austrian 
Silesia. Whilst recommending for the treatment 
of his patients, fresh air, exercise, plain diet, and 
cheerful society, he professed above all to accomplish 
his cures by the aid of water. So long as people were 
contented to place themselves in a condition most 
favourable to health, and left nature to her unguided 


176 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


efforts, they usually, if free from organic disease to 
begin with, derived benefit from the treatment; but all 
the other advantages would have been of no avail unless 
some special agent was put forward as the panacea on 
which to rest their faith. This, as we have said, was 
water, and assuredly no remedy could have been made 
use of which ^ras less injurious. So long as the water 
does not get into men’s brains, and lead them to become 
the dupes of the Shams,—who, without possessing any 
medical qualification, take up with Hydropathy as a 
trade, and profess, through its agency, to cure all dis¬ 
eases—we may not regret the introduction of the system 
by Priessnitz, although he was a Sham, pure and 
simple. 

Hahnemann, the founder of Homoeopathy, was born 
in 1755, just in time to take the field with his theory 
of globules, and to occupy the pinnacle of fame from 
which Cagliostro and Mesmcr were shortly to be 
ignouiiniously hurled. After a life of varied fortune, 
and expulsion from Leipsic as a Quack, Hahnemann 
settled in Paris, where he divided his labours with his 
wife, and lived in a state of ostentatious splendour only 
equalled by Cagliostio himself. Helen Berkeley, de¬ 
scribing her visit to the establishment of Dr. and Mrs. 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


177 


Hahnemann, at Paris, speaks in glowing terms of the 
palatial style of their residence. The liveried footmen 
at the door, the gorgeous furniture of saloon after saloon 
through which she was conducted by relays of men in 
plush and powder, caused her to exclaim : “I already 
knew something of Hahnemann’s celebrity, but my 
opinion of his skill was marvellously fortified by the 
magnificent splendour of the apartments through which 
I was conducted.” Of course, the display was made in 
order to dazzle the eyes and flatter the vanity of those 
who were seeking the great man’s presence. Just as 
in the present day on visiting the establishment of 
one of the fashionable West-End quacks, the patient is 
conducted upstairs and downstairs, through gorgeously 
furnished drawing, dining, and billiard rooms, and 
finally ushered into the penetralia of the owner, where 
he is left to wonder like Helen Berkeley at all the 
wealth displayed before him. The effect of all this 
show, so unlike the modest apartments of the honest 
practitioner, is to make the patient feel he is about to 
be ushered into the presence of some great Hakim, and 
to reconcile him to the fee that is about to be demanded 
of him. 

England has been designated the “ Quack’s Paradise,” 

L 


178 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


and well it may be when we consider that 700,000/. is 
annually spent in patent medicines alone—a sum 
larger than is expended upon the support of all the 
hospitals and dispensaries in the Metropolis—institu¬ 
tions devoted to the alleviation of human suffering, 
whose inmates receive the gratuitous services of medical 
men occupying the highest ranks in their profession. 

To return to Helen Berkeley’s account of her visit to 
Dr. Hahnemann. After waiting several hours admiring 
the magnificent furniture, paintings, and sculpture, she 
was conducted through a second series of state-rooms, 
and ushered into the presence of this modern HUsculapius. 
She gives the following account of the interview:— 

“ I stood in the presence of Monsieur le Docteur and 
Madame Hahnemann. The chamber I now entered 
was more simply decorated than any I had visited. In 
the centre of the room stood a long table ; at its head a 
slightly elevated platform held a plain-looking desk 
covered with books. In front of the desk sat Madame 
Hahnemann with a blank volume open before her, and 
a gold pen in her hand. Hahnemann was reclining in 
a comfortable arm-chair on one side of the table. They 
rose to receive me, and I presented to Madame Hahne- 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


179 


mann a letter of introduction with which I had been 
furnished. 

“ While Madame Hahnemann was glancing through 
the letter, I had an opportunity of taking a survey of 
Hahnemann’s person, for he had not yet resumed his 
seat. His slender and diminutive form was enveloped 
in a flowered dressing-gown of rich material, and too 
comfortable in its appearance to he of other than 
Parisian make. The crown of his head was covered by 
a skull-cap of black velvet; from beneath it strayed a 
few thin snowy locks, which clustered about his fore¬ 
head, and spoke of the advanced age which the lingering 
freshness of his florid complexion seemed to deny. 
His eyes were dark, deep-set, glittering, and full of 
animation. 

“As he greeted me, he removed from his mouth a 
long painted pipe, the howl of which nearly reached to 
his knees; hut, after the first salutation, it was instantly 
resumed, as I was apprised by the volumes of blue 
smoke which began to curl about his head, as though to 
veil it from my injudicious scrutiny. 

“ Madame Hahnemann gracefully expressed her 
gratification at the perusal of the letter, read a few lines 


180 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


of it to her husband, in an under-tone, and made several 
courteous remarks to me, while the doctor bowed, with¬ 
out again removing his pipe. It was evident that he 
did not immediately recognize the name of the writer, 
and he was too much accustomed to receive letters of 
introduction to pay any attention to the contents. 

“Madame Hahnemann placed herself at the desk, 
with the doctor on her right hand and myself on her 
left. I stated the principal object of my visit, attempt¬ 
ing to direct my conversation to Hahnemann, rather 
than to his wife. But I soon found that this was not 
selon la regie. Madame Hahnemann invariably replied, 
asking a multiplicity of questions, and noting the 
minutest symptoms of the case as fast as my answers 
were given. Several times she referred to her husband, 
who merely replied, with a pipe between his teeth, 

‘ Yes, my child; ’ or, ‘ Good, my child, good ! * 

“ And these were the only words that I as yet had 
heard him utter. After some time spent in this manner, 
Madame Hahnemann accidentally asked, 4 Where was 
your friend first attacked?’ ‘ In Germany, I replied.’ 

“ Hahnemann had been listening attentively, although 
he had not spoken. The instant I uttered these words 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


181 


his whole countenance brightened, as though a sunbeam 
had suddenly fallen across it; and he exclaimed, in an 
animated tone, ‘ Have you been in Germany ? You 
speak German, don’t you ? ’ The conversation had 
hitherto been carried on in Trench; but the ready ‘ Cer¬ 
tainly,’ with which I answered his question, apparently 
gave him unfeigned pleasure. 

“He immediately commenced a conversation in his 
native tongue, inquiring how I was pleased with 
Germany—what I thought of the inhabitants, and their 
customs—whether I found the language difficult—how 
I was impressed with the scenery, and continuing an 
enthusiastic strain of eulogium upon his beloved 
country for some time. 

“ I was too much delighted with the doctor’s 
animated and feeling remarks to change the topic. 
Yet I felt that he had lost sight, and was fast inducing 
me to do the same, of the primary object of my visit. 
Madame Hahnemann, however, though she smiled and 
joined in the conversation, had not forgotten the host of 
good people who were taking lessons of patience in the 
antechambers. She finally put an end to the discourse 
by a gentle admonition to her husband, warning him 


182 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


that he must not fatigue himself before the hours 
devoted to business were half spent. 

“ Turning to me she apologized for the interruption, 
saying they received their friends in the evening, and 
would be happy to see me ; then immediately returned 
to the subject of my friend’s indisposition. 

“ After a few more inquiries I received some medi¬ 
cine from her hands, with special directions concerning 
the manner in which it was to be used. She also pre¬ 
sented me with a paper, on which the different kinds of 
food, vegetables, seasoning, and odours which counter¬ 
acted the effects of homoeopathic remedies were 
enumerated.” 

From this scene the reader may form an estimate of 
Homoeopathy as practised by Dr. and Mrs. Hahnemann. 
The motto they assumed to designate their system was, 
“ Similia similibus curantur,” which might be literally 
interpreted to mean, “ old women curing old women.” 

Truly has Carlyle remarked, “Omy Brother ! be not 
thou a Quack! Die rather, if thou wilt take counsel; 
’tis but dying once, and thou art quit of it for ever. 
Cursed is that trade; and bears curses thou knowest 
not how long—ages after thou hast departed, and the 







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A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


183 


wages thou hadst are all consumed ; nay, as the ancient 
wise have written,—through Eternity itself, and is 
verily marked in the doom-hook of God.” 

A Quack is designated in our dictionaries as “A 
boastful pretender to medical skill which he does not 
possess;” Quackery is designated, “The boastful pre¬ 
tentions or mean practices of an ignoramus, particularly 
in medicine.” We have endeavoured to show that in 
addition to the above there are other kinds of quacks. 

To the antiquarian, the description given of a quack 
doctor by Sir Thomas Overbury, in the year 1626, may 
not he altogether without interest. The hook is some¬ 
what quaint in its style ; and must have been looked 
upon as an oracle in its day, for it passed through 
twelve editions. It was entitled—“His Wife: with 
additions of new characters, and many other witty con¬ 
ceits never before printed. It contains many original 
expressions, which cannot fail to amuse the reader. 
The poem of a wife is followed by characters, or wittie 
descriptions of the properties of sundry persons.” After 
describing a “ good woman,” a “ dissembler,” a 
“courtier,” and a “virtuous widow,” he devotes a 
chapter to an “ ordinary widow,” which is followed by 
the character of the Quack, which Sir Thomas illus- 


184 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


trates as follows : “Hee is a mountebanke of a larger 
bill than a taylor; if lie can but cure by names enow 
of diseases to stuffe it with, ’tis all the skill he studies 
for. Hee tooke his first being from a cunning woman, 
and stole his black art from her while hee made her 
sea-coale fire. All the diseases sinne brought upon 
man, dothe he pretend to be curer of; when the truth 
is, his maine cunning is corn-cutting. He hath put 
out more eyes than the small-pox; made more deafe 
than the Cataracts of Nikis ; lamed more than the 
gout; shrunk more sinews than one that makes bow¬ 
strings. To one that would be speedily cured, hee 
hath more delayes and doubles than a hare or a law- 
suite. He seeks to set us at variance with nature, and 
rather than he shall want diseases he’ll beget them. 
His especial practice is upon women; hee labours to 
make their minds sicke, ere their bodies feele it; and 
then there’s work for the dog-leech.” 

Medical impostors invariably set down their patrons 
as simpletons for consulting them. This is not at all 
to be wondered at, for however successful they may be 
in deceiving others, they cannot deceive themselves. 
They know, of course, that they do not possess the 
knowledge they pretend to ; and their greatest wonder 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


185 


is how people fail to detect the imposition practised 
upon them. The tale is told of a celebrated London 
surgeon who was unable to get into practice, although 
a man of undoubted ability and learning, and who pos¬ 
sessed in the highest degree the confidence of his pro¬ 
fessional brethren. Happening to be called upon to 
attend a notorious quack who lived in his neighbour¬ 
hood, and who was driving a prosperous trade, the 
surgeon inquired whether he could give any reason as 
to how it happened that he was left almost without a 
patient, while his neighbour the quack had carnages 
and patients at his doors all day long. The quack 
replied by asking the surgeon the following question : 
—“How many out of the hundred people passing by 
at the present time, do you think, would be set down as 
wise enough to judge between,the merits of us two?” 
The surgebn suggested that, judging by their physiog¬ 
nomies, he should estimate ten as the outside of the 
proportion who would decide in his favour. “Then,” 
said the quack, “ you take the wise men, and give me 
the fools, and the chances of success will be nine to one 
in my favour.” 

In the year 1718a little book was published called 
the Dispensary , which contained a description suitable 


186 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


to the quacks of those days. As we have before said, 
the quack adapts himself to the ever-changing condi¬ 
tions of the times; and so the style of 1718 would 
hardly come up to the requirements of the present day. 
Poor and illiterate people have ceased to supply the 
class from whom the quacks derive the greatest amount 
of their gains. They have now more aristocratic 
patients to deal with, to whom the following style of a 
quack’s establishment would come rather amiss :— 

“ Long has he been of that amphibious fry, 

Bold to prescribe and busie to apply: 

His shop the gazing vulgar’s eyes employs, 

With foreign trinkets and domestic toys. 

Here, mummies lay most reverently stale, 

And there the tortoise hung her coat o’ mail. 

Nor far from some huge shark’s devouring head, 

The flying fish their finny pinions spread. 

Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung, 

And near, a scaly alligator hung: 

In this place, drugs in musty heaps decay’d, 

In that dry bladders and drawn teeth were laid. 

An inner room receives the numerous shoals 
Of such as pay to be reputed fools . 

Globes stand by globes, volumes on volumes lye, 

And planetary schemes amuse the eye, 

The sage in velvet chair here lolls at ease, 

To promise future health for present fees'' 

Perhaps the most absurd belief in the efficacy of a 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


187 


quack remedy was that associated with Sir Kenelm 
Digby’s “ sympathetic powder.” This nostrum had a 
very successful run, and was supposed to heal all man¬ 
ner of wounds by being applied to the weapon with 
which the wound was inflicted. In the present day 
such an instance of popular credulity excites in us a 
contemptuous smile at the weakness and folly of our 
ancestors. Sir Walter Scott makes the following allu¬ 
sion to it in the third canto of his “ Lay of the Last 
Minstrel: ”— 

“ But she has ta’en the broken lance, 

And washed it from the clotted gore, 

And salved the splinter o’er and o’er: 

William of Deloraine in trance, 

Where’er she turned it round and round, 

Twisted as if she galled his wound ; 

Then to her maiden she did say, 

That he should be whole man and sound.” 

The only one of the three learned professions, as they 
are called, that has succeeded in keeping itself free 
from external quackery is the Law. No one ever heard 
of a quack lawyer. The great influence the members of 
the legal profession have acquired in both Houses of 
Parliament has enabled them to fence themselves round 
so effectually, and to cast such a barrier of protection 
about their calling, that no one can assume the duties 


188 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


and practice of the law without having previously 
obtained a legal qualification entitling him to do so. 
In this respect a man cannot pretend to possess a title 
without having given guarantees to society of his fitness 
to bear it. Whereas, unfortunately, any ignoramus 
may assume a medical title, and by means thereof 
swindle and kill the public without being amenable to 
any punishment, except the very doubtful one of being 
denied payment for his pretended services in a court of 
justice. 

The high-minded and honourable lawyer commands 
our highest admiration and respect, as all will bear 
testimony who have been fortunate enough to find such 
a man for their adviser. The doings of men like Quirk, 
Gammon and Snap, who are introduced as having 
charge of the affairs of Tittlebat Titmouse, Esq., and 
of Dodson and Eogg, the speculating Old Bailey 
lawyers, who figure in the imaginary trial of Bardell 
v. Pickwick, excite the disgust of their profession. 
ISevertheless, all the dark deeds—all the mean, dis¬ 
honourable actions, which, rightly or wrongly, are im¬ 
puted to lawyers, either have been committed by one of 
their own order, or they have not been committed at 
all. So we are not quite convinced of the advanage of 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


189 


excluding outside impostors from the legal ranks. 
Many a case of hard-hearted cruelty—of wanton and 
disreputable mala fides , have now to he borne, as the 
deliberate doings of men educated to a high and noble 
calling. The honest lawyer (the majority are of that 
class, although the public seem to doubt it) can never 
cast from him the stigma which attaches to his calling, 
by saying such things were done by the outsiders, the 
mere quack pretenders, for in the law no such order 
exists. 

The subject of Shams, in the broad acceptation of the 
term, is almost of universal application. There appears 
to be more or less of what is commonly called “ hum¬ 
bug ” in every walk of life. Sad indeed is it to think 
that even sacred things are sometimes profaned by the 
impostor, and the road to the altar made to point the 
way to fortune. We have seen how the great church 
dignitary, Cardinal de llohan, made use of his high 
position to endeavour to carry out a design as base and 
wicked as ever entered into the heart of man. A pic¬ 
ture has been presented to us in the Pickwick Papers 
of another class of Clerical Sham, in the person of the 
Deputy Shepherd, Brother Stiggins. The particular 
kind of brotherhood over whom Stiggins assumed the 


190 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


pastorate is not stated ; the description, however, given 
hy Dickens is so perfect a photograph of the class from 
which it is taken, that we feel no apology is needed 
for introducing it here:— 

“ He was a prim-faced, red-nosed man, with a long 
thin countenance, and a semi-rattlesnake sort of eye— 
rather sharp, but decidedly bad. He wore very short 
trousers, and black cotton stockings, which, like the 
rest of his apparel, were particularly rusty. His looks 
were starched, but his white neckerchief was not; and 
its long limp ends straggled over his closely-buttoned 
waistcoat in a very uncouth and unpicturesque fashion. 
A pair of old, worn beaver gloves ; a broad-brimmed 
hat; and a faded green umbrella, with plenty of whale¬ 
bone sticking through the bottom, as if to counter¬ 
balance the want of a handle at the top, lay on a chair 
beside him ; and being disposed in a very tidy and care¬ 
ful manner, seemed to imply that the red-nosed man, 
whoever he was, had no intention of going away in a 
hurry. To do the red-nosed man justice, he would 
have been very far from wise if he had entertained any 
such intention; for, to judge from all appearances, he 
must have been possessed of a most desirable circle of 
acquaintance, if he could have reasonably expected to 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


191 


be more comfortable anywhere else. The fire was 
blazing brightly, under the influence of the bellows; 
and the kettle was singing gaily, under the influence of 
both. A small tray of tea-things was arranged on the 
table ; a plate of hot buttered toast was gently simmer¬ 
ing before the fire; and the red-nosed man himself was 
busily engaged in converting a large slice of bread into 
the same agreeable edible, through the instrumentality 
of a long brass toasting-fork. Beside him, stood a glass 
of reeking 'hot pine-apple rum-and-water, with a slice 
of lemon in it; and every time the red-nosed man 
stopped to bring the round of bread to his eyes, with 
the view of ascertaining how it got on, he imbibed a 
drop or two of the hot pine-apple rum-and-water, and 
smiled upon the rather stout lady as she blew the fire.” 

The principle upon which the Rev. Mr. Stiggins 
proceeded was to obtain an influence over a portion of 
the family into which he gained admission, and then to 
perpetuate it by extolling the virtues of those whom he 
intended to convert, while he deprecated in good set 
terms what he described as the “obderrate bosom of 
the man of wrath.” 

Such was the method of proceeding adopted in the 
case of Mrs. Weller, and, doubtless, many deputy- 


192 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


shepherds are still doing the same work amongst the 
unsophisticated families of the Wellers. It is sincerely 
to he hoped they may all share the same fate as did 
Brother Stiggins at the hands of the senior Weller. 
Nor must the dying declaration of the poor deluded 
Mrs. Weller be passed by unnoticed. It contains a 
moral to he met with in many a household, though 
dressed up in language peculiarly its own. “Yeller, 
says she, I’m afeard I’ve not done by you quite wot 
I ought to have done ; you’re a wery kind-hearted man, 
and I might ha’ made your home more comfortabler. 
I begin to see now, she says, ’yen it’s too late, that if a 
married ’ooman yishes to be religious, she should begin 
with dischargin’ her dooties at home, and makin’ them 
as is about her cheerful and happy, and that yile she 
goes to church, or chapel, or wot not, at all proper 
times, she should be wery careful not to con-wert this 
sort o’ thing into a excuse for idleness and self-indul¬ 
gence. I have done this, she says, and I’ve vasted 
time and substance on them as has done it more than 
me ; but I hope yen I’m gone, Yeller, that you’ll think 
on me as I wos afore I know’d them people,- and as I 
raly wos by nature.” 

“Susan,” says Mr. Weller, “you’ve been a wery 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


190 


good vife to me, altogether; don’t say nothin’ at all 
about it; keep a good heart, my dear; and you’ll live to 
see me punch that ’ere Stiggins’s head yet.” “ She 
smiled at this, Samival,” said the old gentleman, stifling 
a sigh with his pipe, “ hut she died arter all! ” 

Kefleetions similar to Mrs. Weller’s have no doubt 
passed through the minds of many a weak and credulous 
woman, when she came to reckon up how little sub¬ 
stantial good she had derived from the teaching of men 
whom she finds out but too late to have been only 
religious shams : who have helped to make shipwreck 
of her happiness here, and failed to impart that sub¬ 
stantial comfort at the last, which only the true shep¬ 
herd can do. 

Of the causes which led to the enormous growth of 
Shams towards the end of the last century and the 
beginning of the present, perhaps the chief of them was, 
as we have seen, an over-weening confidence in the in¬ 
fallibility of human reason, a disregard of the old- 
world principles of morality and faith, and a blind 
worshipping of cold philosophy and spurious science. 
We have seen that mere philosophy and reason are of 
themselves but blind guides, unless piloted by faith in 
God and love to man: true faith, that, honestly and 

31 


194 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


humbly cherished as a gift from beyond us, is capable of 
winging the little child over the floundering philoso¬ 
pher’s head, up into the presence of Him who has said 
to Babel-building men : “ Thus far shall ye go, and no 
farther.” 

The absence of faith is the eternally unchangeable 
test of a bad moral life—a life which would seek to 
shun the light and hide itself in congenial darkness; 
and this test, rightly applied, will let in a flood of know¬ 
ledge upon the leaders of the French Revolution, as 
well as upon other pseudo-leaders of men, whom it is 
occasionally given to each of us to see lording it in high 
places. Among such rulers of darkness, Shams, as we 
have endeavoured to show—and these not medical only 
—hold a prominent place. 

We have already seen into what a demons’ dance of 
death the French revolutionists were led by pure 
reason, as it is called, yet marked by a credulity, 
grovelling and abject, that would have done no honour 
even to the old priests of Baal. Some of the moral 
aspects of society upon which Shams feed, shall be 
touched on in our next chapter. 



CHAPTER X, 


On some current Shams. 

eVi X the preceding chapters of our little book we have 
JJL endeavoured to present to our readers some re¬ 
markable phases of imposture, not in any precise or 
methodical way—indeed it would have been difficult, if 
not useless, to have applied any method to such a sub¬ 
ject—but altogether in the discursive and spontaneous 
manner in which they occurred to our mind. Our 
readers will perceive that most of the characters we 
have here introduced have had more or less to do with 
the Great Trench Revolution, and in the legacy they 
bequeathed to their descendants through that event, are, 








196 


A. BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


to our way of thinking, not irresponsible for the present 
disastrous state of the affairs of our gallant neighbours. 
For instance, the present Franco-Prussian war we re¬ 
gard as the legitimate offshoot of the wars of the first 
Bevolution and first Empire; and the promoters of 
those famous quarrels as responsible for the recent 
slaughter round Sedan, as they were for the carnage of 
Leipzic or Waterloo. XJnder these circumstances we 
think that it will not he uninteresting to many readers 
to renew their acquaintance with some of the characters 
who figured in the first French Bevolution; and it is 
therefore with the less hesitation that we have deter¬ 
mined to give our little hook to the public. We have 
called it “A hook about Shams,” inasmuch as nearly 
all the characters introduced in it were Shams pure and 
simple; hut as regards most of the other persons who 
figured in that great drama, we ourselves confess an 
inclination to believe that they were all more or less 
infected with the endemic shammery of their time. Far 
he it from us to insinuate aught against the present 
leaders of the French nation ; we believe and hope that 
there are honest men among them who will make no 
little sacrifice to stop the carnage which has lately been 
disgracing the Continent, like the baleful tail of the 
red comet which swept over it during the latter end of 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


197 


the eigthteenth and beginning of the nineteenth cen¬ 
turies,—and now that they have flung their Jonah 
overboard, that their boat may sail more safely and 
gallantly for the future. 

In preparing our little hook it had not originally been 
our intention to do aught more than present our readers 
with a few light and salient sketches—sketches that a 
man might run and read and digest as he runs. In 
looking hack at the previous sheets, however, we were 
forcibly reminded of the famous Hidalgo’s dinner, 
which consisted of no meat hut lots of tablecloth : of 
Father Prout’s advice to Thackeray— 

“ Nor set, like Sliakspeare’s Zany, forth, 

With lots of sack, 

Of bread one pennyworth; ” 

and of Thackeray’s own table, which with jellies for 
those who liked them, he made it a point of furnishing 
with plenty of solids for senior stomachs as well. 
These considerations, then, determined us to furnish 
our readers, if possible, at least with one penn’orth of 
solid pudding. Hany of the thoughts contained in the 
present chapter were suggested by a friend, who found 
the previous sketches a little too light for his digestion. 
We hope the diet here supplied will he sufficiently sus- 


198 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


taining for those, who like our friend, regard Shams and 
Shammery only from a moral point of view. 

In looking at Shams from the moral point of view, 
we neither propose to preach a sermon—for of ser¬ 
monizing in general we have a horror—nor do we 
presume to give good advice, which in ninety-nine 
eases out of a hundred we have always found to he 
a sham of itself; neither do we preach from the Bible 
—the only effective preaching from which is the lead¬ 
ing a good life, the preacher himself being dumb,—nor 
from partisanship of any sort, which of its own nature 
is everlastingly false, deluding poor human beings into 
idolatry of their fellow-men and away from the worship 
of abstract eternal truth, in which there is no more 
partisanship than there is in the clouds of heaven 
above our heads. But in this following chapter we 
merely propose to treat of some matters—the matters 
themselves may sometimes be poetical and sometimes 
rough ; but we shall only endeavour to enunciate stem 
facts—using rough and poetical language, not for the 
sake of the one or the other, but only where roughness 
or poetry appear to us the exactest vehicles for the 
expression of our meaning—in this chapter we propose 
to treat of matters in connection with Shams and 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


199 


Shammery, which, have fallen within the experience 
of our own life ; and nothing more. The rest we leave 
to our readers’ own intelligence—praying them to try 
the facts which we here put forward by the teaching of 
their Bible and of their own lives ; each man’s life who 
has lived for more than a few years, if rightly inter- 
pretated—so runs our firm conviction—being fraught 
with lessons, for good or for evil, as terribly important 
as those contained in the national history of the Jews. 

And to one fact we would earnestly beg our readers* 
attention, namely, that the men who have led from the 
beginning, or who have turned away into the purest 
and noblest lives, are always the men who think in a 
way the farthest removed from the current ideas of 
their time; which, for the most part, are ephemeral, 
and pass away with the occasions which give rise to 
them, bearing away the shams who trust in them to the 
goal of their own doom. Our thought is made plain by 
that terrible French Revolution; during which millions 
of men fought with, and murdered each other, for ideas 
which had enslaved them like tyrants, and which the 
lapse of a few years proved to be utterly false—ideas 
which passed away into the tomb of their own false¬ 
hood, but bore with them upon their journey, never- 


200 


A HOOK AHOirr SHAMS. 


theless, the souls of innumerable men. The more 
particularly do we refer to the French Revolution, 
and the incidents and persons connected with it, inas¬ 
much as we regard that great event as the most 
virulent outburst of Shammery which lias occurred in 
the history of the world, Pagan or Christian, ever since 
history began ; and because it appears to present to us 
the most favourable standpoint from which to take a 
survey of the peculiar natural phenomena Avith which 
we here presume to deal. Look, for instance, at that 
sham Most Christian King, Louis XY., reared in an 
atmosphere of lies, taught by his sycophants and harlots 
to believe himself a god, graduating slowly but 
inevitably into an anima stuprata , whose wicked old 

life at length succeeded in limning death in those tints 

« 

of ineffable horror which immorality alone can temper 
upon its palette. Surely not political, nor diplomatic, 
nor historical, hut Moral science alone can teach us to 
gauge the proportions of such a Sham as that. 

The same may be said of the Cagliostros, the Mesmers, 
the Fouquier Tinvilles, the Marats, the Robespierres, 
and the other monsters who came uppermost in that 
awful deluge—not of waters, hut of shams : the bale- 
lights thrown highest from that frightful volcano, whose 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


201 


preparatory fires, it is our belief, must have gone down 
hundreds of years into the subterranean chambers, not 
of French history only, but of the world’s history at 
large. But this we say merely in passing; for here it 
is only our design, taught by the few salient sketches 
which have just been gathered together for us, to speak 
of some matters in connection with shams and shammery 
possessing a living interest in the present day. 

And here at the outset we beg to disclaim the remotest 
intention of speaking one harsh word against any of our 
fellow-men, Protestant or Catholic, Pagan or Jew, who 
honestly think differently from us; for we revere and 
love them all as members of our brotherhood of the 
human race—vast though it be when regarded from our 
lowly standpoint, but only a little struggling foolish 
family of mem—to whom God nevertheless has thought 
well to show the marvellous riches of his light and love 
—when regarded from the Angel standpoint in the far 
heavens. It is merely our design to speak against 
Shams from the platform of Morality alone—a platform 
where we believe that all the sections of the Christian 
family may meet us and shake hands. Also we beg to 
protest at the beginning that against the great army of 
the press we have no designs—unless it may be against 


202 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


those portions of it which preach fine-flowing morality 
in one column, and advertise the filthiest immorality in 
the next, showing an angel face and a devil’s hoof;—we 
have no designs upon the honourable portion of the 
press—an army which we believe mainly fights for 
good; hut we know it is an army which must needs be 
kept at its full strength by the accession of raw recruits, 
who frequently fire their popguns at random, to the danger 
less often of their enemies than their friends. Only against 
the stereo’d shams which these raw recruits keep pro¬ 
pounding as gospel do we design to direct our attack,— 
believing, from what we know of them, that for so doing 
the veteran soldiers of the press will delight to thank 
us. It is our desire, then, to teach these youthful 
tirailleurs to fight like manlier and nobler men, and 
not with lies as weapons : for if the intelligent reader 
will consider that every man who tells a lie is a sham, 
in so far as he is a liar, he will at once perceive what 
valid cause we have for our warfare. Indeed, it may be 
safely asserted that immediately from their creation men 
commenced to tell lies and be shams, until the realm of 
shams and lies grew and is growing into dimensions 
which it is perfectly bewildering to contemplate. 


This position of ours is clearly unassailable ; but one 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


203 


remarkable point of it has more frequently than others 
presented itself to our minds, namely, that the old 
patriarchs had evidently a clear conception of God, and 
who He is : hut that this conception, in process of time, 
and as their children migrated east and west, the Shams 
laid hold of and marred into the nightmare horrors of 
Pagan mythology. Let us take the serpent-worship of 
India for instance, of which we have lately heard so much: 
what is it, if not the paganized formula of some higher 
belief that was lost—the belief that the soul of man has 
a great spiritual enemy to contend with, of infinite cun¬ 
ning : the pike of little fishes in the stream supernatural ? 
And say, 0 iconoclast of old beliefs, have you not your¬ 
self ever felt the serpent coiled round your heart, and 
been fascinated as a bird in his awful gaze ? If not, we 
can only respectfully assure you of your exceeding great 
verdancy. In the east, then, and the west, the shams 
have been triumphant from the beginning, deforming 
and besliming the old-world apocalypse of One who 
should crush the serpent’s head into adoration of the 
sloughy reptile, the loves of Jupiter, and the Prome¬ 
theus Bound,—and erecting an empire of astounding 
dimensions, in which truth is a foreigner, jeered at and 
despised, without a home, without a refuge, or a place to 
rest its head. 


204 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


It is upon this enormous realm of the Shams, then, 
that we here propose to make a descent, and to bombard 
a few of their prominent fortresses at a closer range. 
Is o doubt, to some of our friends, o^r expedition—filibus¬ 
tering if you will—will appear marvellously quixotic, 
the fight being so terribly unequal; but we have rare 
confidence in this fine old weapon of ours, the leaked 
Truth, which has roared grandly upon some great occa¬ 
sions in the world’s history, but which in this age of 
civilization and conventional tenderness for shams, is 
seldom unmasked. And here we feel ourselves in a 
much stronger position than the eloquent preacher, who 
is obliged by the necessity of his case to be tender of his 
hearers’ prejudices—those thieves of the human soul— 
and to expend his eloquence in sesthetical palaver, the 
meat and drink of shams, for fear of preaching to 
empty walls. And even more strongly still does our 
position hold good of the teacher for fame: for if you 
teach for glory, you must tickle the shams with their 
own doctrine, that your name may be known and 
cherished as long as there is a Sham to feel that you are 
a man after his own heart. 

I3ut, “ Here,” interposes the keenly intelligent 
reader,—“ Here is another babbler about * the truth.’ 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS, 


205 


The teacher to the right, and the teacher on the left, 
and the teacher at the street corner and round the street 
corner—they have all got it; and a pretty muddle they 
are making of it!—crying, ‘Come buy, come buy!’ like 
loud-tongued butchers in the market—‘ Come buy of me, 
that other shop sells trash ! ’ If we were to judge from 
her teachers, Truth must he some crazy, inconsequential 
creature, who could he no ornament-to our homes, and 
had better be left in her native skies. But I bet you 
my life that none of them have got it at all:—if you 
look into their eyes—that is, if any one looks who can 
see—you will find there the sharp human intelligence, 
and nothing more : not a ray of that light which 
descended out of the heavens upon the world, about the 
world’s mid-age, and has not gone back yet. And you, 
0 babbler, how are we to know that even you are not a 
sham—evolving what you consider truth out of the 
depths of your consciousness, which after all may only 
be a storehouse of wind and lies ? Show us your 
credentials.” 

Well interposed, intelligent reader. At all events 
you are no sham. But if you possess a spark of 
that light that never was on sea or land (and you can 
test the matter by the reign of peace within), our words, 


206 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


we promise you, shall carry their own credentials to 
your heart. Yet let us whisper in your ear that 
Truth must always he laboured for by each man, as 
miners dig for gold; the implements of labour being 
honest effort, and prayer, and noble lives. We mean 
that the knights of Truth must win their spurs in action, 
and not talk; like Him who wheels his sun through 
the heavens, and his earth along the fields of space, and 
says never a word about it. Suppose He were only to 
talk about it, and not do it, what would become of you, 
0 Shams? But take courage, honest reader, for the 
labour is full of delight; for the Truth whom you follow 
shall know how to place flowers and beautiful resting- 
places along your march, flooding your soul with light 
and sweetness and love for your fellow-men, giving 
you a home in your heart more lovely and joyful than 
a palace, even were you dying in a hovel, and shall lure 
you in ecstasy of joy upward to the eternal hills. But 
even this is not all that she shall do for you. If you 
will take honest service under her to fight her battles— 
and mind you, her battle-field lies altogether within 
your own soul, and not against your neighbours—she 
shall unrobe for you the awful mystery of Death, before 
whom men hide their heads in abject terror; and she 
shall cast her lantern behind him, and open for you 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS, 


207 


such a wonderfully lovely vista, that you will long to 
pass into it as a city of refuge from this world of shams* 
But this is only between you and me, 0 reader. Few 
are the knights who win this Victoria Cross, and almost 
as few who believe it possible to be won. 

Such are our credentials, honest reader; but how 
shall we present them to the Shams ? We shall do 
nothing of the kind—seeing that the sham is a man 
who will look the truth in the face and swear it is a lie, 
and will look a lie in the face and swear it is the truth 
—knowing no better; who feels in his heart that he 
cannot live (and he is perfectly right), and by conse¬ 
quence denies the immortality of the soul; while the 
honest man feels in his heart that he cannot die (and he 
is perfectly right), and by consequence asserts it. 
What is the use of parley between these ? 

But here, officers, enough of this manoeuvring,— 
unmask that gun—our terrible mitrailleuse! There 
shall be a great fluttering and noise of shams that have 
been winged, but fear them not: for armies of honest 
men shall successively take their place upon our battery, 
and our gun shall roll its eternal music until shams 
have disappeared. 


208 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


And hear, ye officers, keep a sharp look-out to the 
front, for stragglers who may desire to take refuge with 
us from the enemy’s country, and do not fire upon them 
if clothed in a single rag of honest or noble purpose. 
Since it is our good pleasure to receive such refugees, 
to clasp them by the hand, to kneel down and kiss the 
dust off those honest shams’ feet, and to robe them with 
robes of honour, and enrol them as of us. For our war 
is not against flesh and blood, nor human hearts; but 
against that tremendous Spirit, impalpably insidious, 
and only not omnipotent in its insidiousness, which 
makes and is the father of shams, and against which 
poor raw and untrained humanity is available as the 
wax is in the flame; whose active messengers are those 
infernal shepherds, Pride and Lust and Yanity, 
driving men into the dreary pit, like butchers driving 
calves; which whispers into its victims’ ears that they 
are gods, until it lures them over the precipice, and 
then laughs at and mocks them—those poor Monboddo- 
men crawling upon all fours, who were taught to 
believe that their heads were among the stars. 

It is our will, officers, therefore, to deal tenderly by 
those poor shams, and to help them, so fur as we may, 
or as they themselves will permit us to help them, to 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


209 


make good their escape from Shamdom :—for we know 
it is no easy task for them, and that the master whom 
they worship will take good care that they should seldom 
be exposed to the temptation of an humble thought or 
generous aim ;—but that they should live in an atmos¬ 
phere of flash sentiments, inflated imaginings, and plea¬ 
sant prophesyings, to which every event in God’s world 
day by day gives the lie. Here, for instance, is a poor 
sham, clothed to appearance in all sleekness; but look 
sharp at him, and you will find his feet slipshod, his hair 
dishevelled, and his loins ungirt. “ Opinions for a soul 
unzoned ? It has lately been dropsical, and your articles 
seem to suit.” “ Yes, sir, here is exactly the thing we 
knew you would want. The texture is fine and loose, 
and will fit you easy as a Hessus’ robe. We shall meet 
you again.” And our friend of the dishevelled soul 
goes home, learning by the way, to his infinite joy, that 
Hero was as good as Socrates, Iscariot as Christ, and 
that the butcher who blasphemes in the market is the 
favourite child of God, and shamdom his peculiar empire. 
But the Nessus’ robe did its work : they met again. 

And here is a poor sham, radiant with the toil and 
sweat of men, and ready for the vermil feast of 
Sybarites. But look sharp at him, and you will find 


210 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


him clothed in a strait doublet, his eyes in a bandage 
and his feet in cramps. “ Opinions to prove whatever 
is, is right, and should always remain so?” “Yes, 
sir, here is the very article we knew you would want. 
There is no doubt wrong is consecrated by time, and 
becomes holy right; and because men will have it, God 
must yield.” And a messenger passed out from behind 
the counter and hitched that sham’s doublet tighter, 
and closer hound his bandage, and wedged his cramps ; 
and Jeshurun went his way, glorifying the freedom of 
Shamdom. But we tell you what happened that night. 
Another messenger, of scarcely mortal mien, came to 
the corner of Jeshurun’s house and sounded his sharp 
signal; and terrible men, like pursuivants, sprang like 
a lightning stroke from round the four corners of the 
house, and burst resistless in and rifled it; all his sweat 
and toil of men, and trappings for the vermil feast, not 
being the right coin to pay those shadowy brokers. 
Pray what became of Jeshurun ? 

Messieurs to the right, and on the left! Have you 
no healing for a soul diseased, except your Nessus’ 
robes, your bandages and cramps? Tor this is the 
silent piteous cry of all humanity, and yet a cry to 
which men are ashamed to give loud utterance,— 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


211 


“ Medicine for a soul diseased! ” We know what you 
will say, that you do not believe in such things, and we 
know that it is hard for you to believe in a liberty you 
have never known, or oppression from which you have 
never escaped. But we pray you to entertain, if only 
for a moment, the suspicion that long, long ago, you 
may have lost out of your souls some delicate vital 
energy, which clothes for the man possessing it the 
heavens and earth with joy and hope and unseals the 
mystery of his Bible for him,—or transforms for him 
who has lost it God’s universe into a howling wilder¬ 
ness and that other Bible into a sham—we mean the 
vital energy to see and to believe. But you look out 
upon this fair Poem of the Creation, and you 
triumphantly ask if there is anything there but what 
speaks of freedom and hope and love for all. And this 
is true : ay, more : for all this boundless wealth of 
power is day by day being expended in the creation of 
such as you—of souls that, once finding a limit to this 
infinite loveliness of space, would fall back upon them¬ 
selves and die. But, Messieurs, is there anything there 
that tells you to play truant and disorderly children 
with soiled garments—to be shams ? for look again : 
and as well as the freedom and beauty and love, do you 
not find something reigning there among those suns and 


212 A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 

stars—an empire after all not an inch of which is yours 
—that speaks of Order the most unbending—planets, 
like well-ordered families of men and nations, wheeling 
in utter obedience to the behest of their suns; and suns, 
it maybe, wheeling in the same obedience to their farther 
centres : no revolutionizing, no republicahizing, or 
planet-tongued oratory to the effect that the Sun is a 
tyrant and unfit for his high position, and that it would 
be better for the solar family if Jupiter were promoted 
to his place. And pray, Messieurs, how could even 
God govern his empire without such inflexibility, and 
is not such inflexibility even a mercy ? But look at 
home—at home within the universe of your own heart; 
and can you undertake to affirm that it is an ordered 
star-spot, fitted to shine eternally in unison with the 
Empire around us :—or is it a blotch—a blotch, which 
can only be got rid of by wiping it out ? 

“Those heavens and stars,” said the philosopher, 
“how beautiful, but, ah, so sad!” Are they so sad, 
Master Philosopher? Wert thou not gazing upon the 
firmament of thine own soul, and not upon that of God ? 
How so sad, 0 philosopher? Go and get rid of the 
dead men’s bones out of your sepulchre, and worship 
God instead of murderous and cruel men, and we pledge 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS, 


213 

you our word of honour that the whole heavens shall put 
on marriage-robes to bid you joy. Ah! these dead men’s 
bones, what a vengeance do they not wreak upon you, ye 
shams !—upon the philosopher spinning his fine theories 
and the barrow-man wheeling his cabbage-heads—bow¬ 
ing you down into the dust in shame and fear, so that 
no man dare ciy out against them. Ah! these dead 
men’s bones, what a vengeance do they not wreak upon 
you !—filling our reformatories, and lqnatjc-asylums, 
enriching the quack doctors, who pretend to heal the 
soul by vamping the body, to stop an eclipse by beating 
a drum. Ah! these dead men’s bones, unescapable 
is their vengeance, 0 shams!—enlarging our prisons, 
reddening the fair face of earth with carnage, stifling 
our streets with immorality, crowding the public-houses 
with men on fire as they walk along. But here, officers, 
load that gun with a brimful charge. . . . There 

was far into the night the noise of an excited and 
brawling crowd. We went in the direction of the 
noise ; but when arrived at the place whence it came, 
the crowd had all gone, leaving as it were the sound of 
their departing behind them. But in a lonely corner of 
the street there was a tavern, lit withinside by a dark¬ 
some light—a tavern which we seemed to recognize, 
and yet never to have seen before. We entered, and. 


214 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


the drawer, in a mask of shadow, came out from behind 
the bar, and opened the counter from beneath the tap ;— 
and from the floor to the top of the counter, and all 
around it, was filled with bundles of burning cigars. 
When we looked again, the cigars had changed into the 
shapes of bundles of burning men. The landlord was 
not there, but his servants: he seemed to have been 
away for his long vacation at his country-house in 
Hades!. 

Ah! these dead men’s bones, the scourges of the 
fractious children of God!—eating your schemes and 
philosophies off the face of the earth—filling you brim¬ 
ful of delusions, your Mesmerisms and Spiritualisms 
—libelling Death with a horror which he possesses 
only for the shams—chasing you like hunted animals 
till you know not what is the matter with you, or 
where to rest your weary souls :—and so jump madly 
into eternity, forgetful that they may even chase you 
there. And not the least awful part of this awful 
mystery is this :—that you will cling to your cruel 
torturers, as if there were no pleasure in all the 
universe without them; and kiss the rods that weal 
your backs—slaving before your secret skeletons with 
an abject worship, forgetful that your skeletons shall 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


215 


each of them one day run away with you upon his 
hack. But you comfort yourselves with the saying 
that such things must he: that so it has been appointed 
in the course of nature. We say emphatically NO! 
We say that He who sent you here has more than 
vindicated his eternal mercy, by making you infinitely 
more than equal in the fight—able, if only willing, 
to live with souls like open palaces before heaven 
and before God, and placed the power within your 
hands—but you will not use it, for you do not love 
it—to fling your dead bones to the four winds and 
pitch your skeletons downstairs. 

But come, Messieurs, let us descend with you into 
your own arena, and struggle with you there. You say 
that you are the cream of all humanity, and that the 
myriad stream of men that have traversed this world 
before you, and to whom the same God gave intelligence 
and life that is giving them to you, scarcely rose above 
the high-water mark of fools. But let us call up a 
spirit of the by-gone time—one of your ancestors say— 
and hear what he shall tell you :—“ My children, God 
has most certainly given you wonderful gifts, that make 
you little less than the Angels in power: for He has 
enabled you to make the lightnings of heaven your 


216 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


eager servants, and the vapour of the earth to do your 
will. But you will please to remember that there are 
no gifts without their responsibilities, rising pari passu 
with the gifts. And here, my children, you are no 
better off than we were, who lived so many ages ago, 
and were found unworthy of the gifts that had been 
given to us, because with them we did not worship God 
alone. To us, too, the world showed its signs and its 
wonders, to judge us for weal or for woe, as we judged 
them, in humbleness or pride. To us, too, time showed 
its marvellous events, having the most vital significance 
for us; but because we interpreted them out of our 
own poor pride of intellect, and wrung from them the 
meaning that we wished to wring, our interpretations— 
when the events had rolled away and us with them, 
and left behind them only the significance of historical 
finger-posts—were found to be all wrong ; the few who 
might have told us their right meaning having been 
unheard and despised. And as to your civilization, my 
children—your latest fashion of fig-leaves and shins— 
the less boasting of it the better : for it may be a nice 
question whether or no its main work has been the 
teaching of human tongues to lie more smoothly and 
pleasantly, the investing of pride and lust with 
irresistible piquancy, the garlanding of dung-hill foun- 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


217 


tains of literature—spouters of filth—with roses; so 
that souls may he tempted to drink and become candi¬ 
dates for the deodorizing flame. But, at all events, 
when touched by the pin-test of wounded ambition or 
pride, your civilization, no less than our savagery, 
delights to paint itself with human blood, and listen to 
the music of weeping widows and starving children, and 
the groans and horror of dying men. Do you need the 
proof? You have not far to look for it afield, where 
two of your leaders have so lightly laid the world by 
the ears, like drunken roues mauling each other in a 
street-row:—so that an Angel watching from the far 
heavens might sneer at you as at us-—if Angels might 
sneer and not always he loving and pitying—might 
sneer at you as the faction-fighting children of the 
Earth—those vendettists among the realms of God. 
And as to your signs of civilization, 0 children, one 
question I would ask you before I go. Is your railway 
director an emblem of honesty, does your telegraph 
tell no lies, and have your penny priesthood taught you 
an easier way of keeping the Ten Commandments than 
was known a thousand years ago—when I lived ? Yet 
not railways, nor telegraphs, nor penny priestcraft, but 
these Ten Commandments are the only laws of civilized 
life. Earewell! ” 


218 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


Yes, 0 Spirit of the by-gone time, these Ten Com¬ 
mandments are for us still, even as they were for thee, 
the only laws of life: and in so far as we are unfaithful 
to them, we are no better than those who in all the ages 
of the world have gone before us. Tor be pleased to 
remember, Messieurs, that these are the invisible angels 
—not your ab-extra reforms and philosophies—sent out 
through all time, upon the face of all the earth, to 
educe order out of its chaos, and send men home down 
the shelving precipice, or up the mount of God—to 
where your railways, nor telegraphs, nor penny priest¬ 
hoods may go. We have said invisible angels, and yet 
hardly are they invisible : for if you look out over your 
cities and kingdoms, you may trace them at their work 
—flashing along your streets, lightning round your street- 
corners, lifting humble and faithful men heavenward, or 
mowing down into the dust the myriads who will not 
wrestle for the purity of their souls, and grow strong, 
like babies learning to walk. Tor to the old man as to 
the child, this wrestling is the glory and the necessity of 
life ; nor need we wonder at it: for pray would you be 
worth having for the military service of the Great King, 
if you will not learn to fight for him ;—the scene of his 
battles lying within your own soul, and your Moabites 
and Philistines violating its borders—ay, perhaps, 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


219 


defiling the inmost recesses of his sanctuary, his holy of 
holies in your heart. And here we use no figure of 
speech; these battles being stem matter of fact—ay, 
infinitely sterner matters of fact, and fraught with more 
tremendous consequences to you and to me, than those 
other battles of lust and greed of power now being 
joined upon the Rhine.*' Yes, Sires, you call Him your 
God of battles—a heathen Mars to be invoked at will 
by squabbling Christians: you pray Him to go forth 
with your armies, and become your servant to give you 
victory, to enrich your paltry nests with plunder and 
empurple them with blood—your German or French 
pin-specks in his own realms : you beseech Him to 
worship you, and to give you honour and glory: ay, 
Sires, it is no less than this:—you appeal to the Lord of 
Heaven and Earth that He would be pleased to become, 
for your own ineffable sakes, the particeps criminis in the 
murder of your fellow-men and of his own creatures, 

* Some friends, whom we sincerely thank, have suggested that 
our remarks on the Franco-Prussian war are too strong. Is it 
possible that any language can be too strong for the authors of 
such butcheries as that of Sedan? We wish to state that this 
essay, for the most part, was written when no one surmised that 
the Seine and not the Rhine was to be the theatre of the war. 
But no corrections are needed, because Rhine or Seine makes no 
difference to the argument. 


220 


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whom. He created in love and whom He loves still— 
Frenchmen or Germans alike. Hear ye, Sires, is this 
well of you ? But you say, Our peoples compel us to 
it, and vox populi is the voice of God. Hay, nay, 
Sires, vox populi cannot be the voice of God, seeing that 
vox populi upon a certain great occasion nailed Christ 
himself to the Cross, and would do it again. “ These 
are our peoples’ battles,” say you? Ah! for shame. Have 
you not taught them to worship Glory—that horrid idol 
smeared with blood ? Have you not taught them to 
worship the unity or squaring of your paltry acres at 
your neighbours’ expense—the building of a wider sty 
for yourselves: though but one unity is possible, which 
you take good care shall never be accomplished as long 
as the world lasts—the unity of love with your fellow- 
men, whether bounded by the Rhine, the Tiber, or the 
Thames. 0 Yaterland of Tipperary, and 0 Patrie of 
Clare, were your leaders, instead of pounding in their 
people’s skulls, to construct a pontoon bridge—the 
material being of Christian fellowship and love—across 
your Shannon-Rhine, you should both of you be vic¬ 
torious, and God should whisper into your peoples’ 
hearts that they had fought well, and won his Victoria 
Cross. Look, ye Clare and Tipperary kings to it. If 
ye cannot rule your fellow-men in peace and love, and 


A BOOK ABOTJT SHAMS’. 


221 

teach them to fight only the battles that bring joy to 
their homes, and heaven down into their hearts, it were 
eternally better for you to starve in exile, or die upon 
the throne-stool of an honest conscience in a ditch. 

Take care, therefore, ye leaders of men, that He is the 
God of these battles—these butcheries of his creatures 
that ye mean. 13ut we would hint to you the battles that 
He is the God of, and the campaigns that you may safely 
wage, without any misgiving that his hosts shall go 
before you in the fight, and conquer for you, not the 
peace of a few years, but a peace eternal, if you only 
appeal to Him in the proper way. The battles that we 
mean are those against your own pride, your own lust 
of aggrandisement, your own paltry vanities, your scorn 
and hatred of your fellow-men, i.e. scorn and hatred of 
God, whose Spirit is giving them life and light as He is 
giving them to you. These are the battles upon which 
you should implore a blessing—not in the inflated spirit 
of statesmen, diplomatists, and philosophers, to whom 
He seems to entertain an objection; but in the spirit of 
little children, whom He delights to hear. And be 
pleased to recollect that these hosts of his are no 
poetical figure, but, with all your paraphernalia, infi¬ 
nitely grander and sterner than yours. For you might 


222 


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see them if yon would, or cared to fight his battles 
and not your own : see the valleys and the mountains 
clothed beyond the farthest hill-tops with clouds of 
armed men, of horse and foot, gleaming in flashing 
armour and raining their red-hot hail,—marching and 
counter-marching, and bursting forth into lightning 
charges of terrible cavalry, before whom your Chasseurs 
or TJhlans were available as grass before the wind. 
But this was a battle that was fought for the prize of 
the human will. The shots from those far marksmen 
were keenly aimed; but they reached to the heart and 
lips, and fell down spent: for oh ! that Trooper whom 
we worshipped, he rode and fought so well! . . . 

Now, Messieurs, of these faction-fights in Lorraine— 
how say you ? That He whose battles lie altogether in 
a different direction—in the direction of eternal peace 
and order for each human soul—can have any hand, act, 
or part in them as a partisan upon either side ? How 
say you of our civilization ? One thing it has certainly 
done for us : it has taught us to murder more rapidly 
and surely; but the old-world cause of our murdering it 
has in nowise lessened or removed. For ever since 
history began these leaders of men—in obedience 
to nothing but the behests of their own pride, and 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


223 


like dark invisible spirits of hate—have been laying 
their peoples by the ears to fight—for what? For 
inches of this earth—not one inch of which, in stem 
matter of fact, is it possible to win, even by the murder 
of the whole human race—for inches of this earth, 
which in seeming mockery of those blood-seeking leaders 
and their followers, drank them all up into its secret 
chambers, and hid them away in shame, as it is hiding 
them still. Yes, Messieurs, those sham leaders are at 
their old tricks. All the plains of Asia and Europe, since 
men began to live, have been reddened with the hecatombs 
of human victims, that those heathen high-priests have 
been offering to their lying, filthy idols; and even now, 
in the world’s old age—when it ought to know better 
from sad experience past—those same high-priests are 
able to secure believers, and mock heaven and degrade 
the human race by their sacrificing still. But it is con¬ 
solatory to know—and it needs no prophetic spirit to 
know it, but only a keen appreciation of the onward 
march of events, and an outlook upon the world and 
upon life from the unclouded atmosphere of the little 
child, not from the troubled waters of the man who has 
been too clever for heaven, for earth, and for himself— 
to know that those high-priests shall not mock God for 
ever. Although they have made, and shall continue to 


224 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


make, on into tlie end, a jarring chaos of the human 
race, those who die and live again shall wake—roused 
by those ten invisible angels whom we have named,— 
into a world of ordered harmony, in which pride and 
hatred, and devil’s seed-sowings and harvests, have 
ceased to exist and confusion reigns no more.* 

But as to these faction-fights in Lorraine, let us 
tell you a tale, sirs, which applies as sternly to men as 
to nations and to the world at large :—Upon a time 
there was a drunkard, who finding the consequences of 
his getting drunk, v occasionally very tiresome, entered 
into a league with other persons of his class that they 
should only get drunk upon proper occasions. Accord¬ 
ingly he went home and began to abstain from drinking, 

* “ Stirb und werde! 

Denn so lang du das nicht hast, 

Bist du nur ein triiber Gast, 

Auf der dunkeln Erde.”— Goethe. 

Quoted by Mr. Matthew Arnold ; and which may be almost 
literally translated thus: 

“ Die, and come again to life! 

For aye, ere winning through this test, 

Thou’It wander but a stranger guest, 

In a darkling world of strife.” 

We wish to state that in this essay we mean no unkindness to 
Mr. Arnold; on the contrary, we desire to be regarded as amongst 
his admirers. 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


225 


but to cultivate other pleasant and apparently less 
troublesome vices, in the place of the one he had given 
up. But in time his new vices effectually darkened and 
troubled his mind, and commenced appealing to heaven 
against him : so the command went forth that he should 
be called out into the street and confess his shame 
before all the passers-by. In his trouble he fled for 
refuge to his old enemy, who comforted him for a time 
with great adroitness; but suddenly turning round upon 
him and sending one of his strongest servants against 
him, laid them both by the ears in the public way. 
Both of them appealed to God, professing, the one, 
that he fought against the pride of a too powerful 
adversary : the other that his struggle lay against the 
principle of a man’s liberty to get drunk andjmnoy his 
neighbours. In the end the strongest of the belligerents 
effectively crippled the other: and the passers-by, 
according to each one’s good fancy, applauded, or not, 
this public confession of shame—taking heed only of the 
professed, not of the invisible but real causes which led 
to it. How pray, sirs, could you undertake to draw 
before God the distinction between the man drunk with 
pride and drunk with wine, or between him armed with 
a cudgel and armed with a mitrailleuse—except that 
the former is the more merciful weapon of the two. 


226 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


And you, 0 drunkard, who crushed your antagonist’s 
head,—we beseech you not to rejoice over-much: for it 
is a law eternal that your own head shall pay its 
cudgel-score by-and-by. 

And now, Sires, before you appeal to your God of 
battles, we counsel you to he careful, for one or two 
reasons: first, because your German unity or French 
preponderance is not worth one drop of human blood ; 
next, because one of you was too forward to declare 
battle and the slaughter of his fellow-men, and the 
other had too little self-control not to accept it—in so 
far both of you being equally dishonest before God; 
again, before you could fight your duel, ye two had 
to pass beyond the frontier of the Lord of peace and 
love—ay, sirs, far into the realms of the great Sham, 
the sweetest organ-notes of whose worship are the wail¬ 
ing of widows and children, and the groans of human 
wretchedness and shame,—into his realms who shall 
feed you with your own pride and carnage up to the 
top of your bent, and force you to shower broadcast 
another seed-crop of hatred, which shall ripen in quick 
time for your children, as La Rothiere, Leipsic, and 
other seed-sowings have ripened for you now. This 
is what ye are doing, ye sham-Christian leaders of 


A. BOOK ABOUT SIT AMS. 


227 


men—to whom heaven entrusted its message of peace 
and good-will; but which ye invest with your own 
meaning of pride and hatred and carnage—so far as 
in yon lies, marring it into the guise of an angel out 
of hell—and then turn round, your degraded selves and 
followers, and charge God himself with the conse¬ 
quences of your own crimes : for he pleased to remem¬ 
ber that there may be Judas Iscariot nations as well as 
Judas Iscariot men. No, Sires, ye have long passed 
out of His realms, whose “empire is peace” without 
any fiction, and permit us to assure you, that by 
slaughtering, and not by forgiving and loving each 
other, ye shall never get back. 

But “ Oh,” interposes the dapper Philister Spirit, the 
great Idea of the time, “ we have heard something like 
this before. No doubt Morality is very good, if the 
world could only be governed by it; but the world 
never has, and never will. Let the preacher preach 
whatever he may, the only principle that can ever 
govern us effectually is the principle of Self-interest, 
personal or national: Expediency being the commander- 
in-chief of our armies the best fitted to bring into sub¬ 
jection the opinions of men. With these principles of 
Self-interest and Expediency when Morality interferes, 


228 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


it had better be laid up in store for a better day—say 
the millennium, whenever that shall be.” 

And here, 0 dapper Philister Spirit, we respectfully 
doff our hats to you, acknowledging that in a measure 
you are right. Were the world ruled by Morality 
alone, each man would be his own governor and his 
own king, loving his neighbour as himself, and would 
have no need of your commanders-in-chief and standing 
armies ; but this has never been, and we concede to you 
never will be, so long as the human race shall last under 
its present conditions. Nevertheless, 0 great Idea, we 
would hint to you, that upon your principle the world 
is not governed at all; but presents before heaven and 
before God a vast seething mass of anarchy and human 
volcanoes—emblem of material chaos that once reigned 
here—out of which the Morality you reject, the prin¬ 
ciple which, like God, works from within the heart of 
each man outwards, shall evolve order by and by, 
without your leave. 

We would hint to you, too, that you and your 
cousin-german Spirits may bowl for many years—a 
score it might be, or hundreds—and that other invisible 
bowler whom you despise, and who can so well afford 
to give you great odds, shall come bowling after you; 


A HOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


229 


and just in the supreme moment of your triumph and 
glory, shall howl you into the ditch :—where you shall 
remain, while earth and heaven go on in their smilingly 
indifferent course—you shall remain, 0 Philister Spirit, 
a monument for ever of too clever howling. For if you 
look afield, there where the aristocracy of Hades have 
been holding their grand battue of human grouse in 
Lorraine—the enormous “bags” of those shadowy 
gentlemen reported with unmeasured triumph in the 
leading journal there below—you will find rare ven¬ 
geance exacted from some fine bowlers for neglecting 
the very principle you despise.* And we speak from no 
pretended prophetic spirit, but from the text of current 

* We have been told that this is too strong ; and therefore beg 
to put into court the following remarks of the MM. Erckman- 
Chatrian upon the battle of Ligny:—“ J’ai vu la des choses qu’on 
ne peut presque pas croire : des homines tues au moment de la plus 
grande fureur, et dont les figures horribles n’etaient pas changees ; 
ils tenaient encore leurs fusils, debout contre lesmurs, et rien qu’en 
les regardant il vous semblait les entendre crier : ‘ A la baionnette ! 
Pas de quartier !’ C’est avec cette pensee et ce cri qu’ils etaient 
arrivees d’un seul coup devant Dieu ! J’en ai vu d’autres a demi 
morts qui s’etranglaient entre eux. Et vous saurez qu’a Fleurus il 
fallait separer les Prussiens des Francais, pareequ’ils se levaient de 
leurs fits ou de leurs bottes de paille pourse dechirer et se devorer! 
La guerre ! Ceux qui veulent la guerre, ceux qui rendent les hom¬ 
ines semblables a des animaux feroces, doivent avoir, un compte 
terrible a regler la-haut.” And look at the accounts of the Sedan. 
Surely to the most rose-water optimist that battle must have 
seemed nothing less than a demons’ carnival. 


230 


A ROOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


events,—whose true meaning does not always lie upon 
the surface ;—but down deep you will have to dive if 
you would grasp it to any purpose. For be pleased to 
remember that in all the events since the world began 
there are two currents, each of them often running con¬ 
trary to the other:—the current which is seen and 
appreciated by the shams and leads them upon the 
rocks, and the current perceptible only to the deeper 
vision of honest men, constraining them to struggle 
with opposing forces—which show themselves to be lies 
and vanish when nobly encountered—that they may 
win a securer resting-place in the end. 

You are incredulous, 0 Philister Spirit; but let us 
endeavour to exhibit our meaning a little more clearly.* 
There have been some great events that happened in the 
history of this world, and we would ask you how many 
men lived at the time of those events who rose into the 
higher atmosphere of their true meaning ? How many 
of the antediluvians, for instance, rightly apprehended 

* It is needless for us to disclaim all feeling of irreverence in 
writing of Scriptural events as we have done here. We have 
merely reported the spirit of writers who lived near the time— 
Tacitus, for instance, who stigmatizes Christianity as an 
“exitiabilis superstitio.” What we have said, is said in supreme 


reverence. 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


231 


the purpose for which the waters came ; or, of the Jews, 
who truly grasped the significance of that great world¬ 
reforming meeting, once held upon the famous Jewish 
Hill ? “ Oh ! ” says the Philister Idea, “ but those 

men were blinded by their sins.” True : but have we 
no sins to bind their bandage round our eyes now, and 
hide the significance of our own events from us ? 

Let us take that great reform meeting, we have 
named, which was held upon the Jewish Primrose 
Hill. The Philister Spirit has sent out its messen¬ 
gers to report the meeting for its worshippers ;—and, 
accredited to Pilate or to Caiaphas, or to some loud- 
tongued, ode-trolling Sadducee (pray could you have 
accredited them to any one else ?) we know what their 
report would have been. “ Within the last few days 
great commotion has been caused in the capital by the 
execution of a man, who had secured great popularity 
among the common people by his pretended miracles 
—his followers asserting that he was not only able to 
cure the sick, but to raise the dead to life. But these 
people are the most superstitious of men. So the 
authorities at length got hold of him, and took him 
before the Governor; when he was condemned for 
his crimes. The execution took place last Friday out- 


232 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


side the city ; great consternation being caused by 
an eclipse which happened at the time, and which 
these people, frightfully ignorant as they are, and 
having no knowledge of the scientific causes of the 
event, regarded with terror as something snpematural. 
P.S.—Dining with the high-priest the other night, he 
assured me that the Governor has gained great popularity 
by liberating the patriot, Monsieur Barabbas ; and that 
he has entered into a contract with the Philistines for 
the construction of a railway from Jerusalem to Jericho. 
This is the measure of an enlightened ruler, and is fraught 
with hope of national improvement for the Jews, who 
cannot long remain behind the nations around them in 
the march of civilization.” 

This, 0 Philister Spirit, would infallibly have been 
your report. Therefore, we pray you, Messieurs les 
Tirailleurs, to be more careful in passing judgment 
upon the floods and crucifixions going on before your 
eyes, and to see, each of you, before firing, that your 
popgun is loaded at least with some small pellet of truth. 

Alas, for our battle! Here is the printer at our 
doors, telling us to cut it short, so that he may at once 
report the result to the public. Yet our horn, like 
Roland’s, could rattle on till sunset: for we could tell 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


233 


you many things, 0 dapper Philister Spirit, which 
to your present way of thinking might not come 
amiss.* We could tell you, for instance, how to get rid 
of hell, and to take vengeance on the Athanasian Creed : 
for you may erase the one and the other out of your 
formularies, and hell shall still he there, and the terrible 
Creed hear witness against you, so long as you have the 
courage to do what is wrong. But erase sin out of your 
heart, and we undertake to promise you, that hell shall 
vanish out of your horizon, and the Athanasian Creed 
shall change into a pillar of light. You start, 0 Spirit, 
telling us ’tis a thing of faith; hut what of that 
bandage we see across your brows ? 

Ah! this faith,—what is it ? A new-lit star in a 
dark sky, like that which travelled over the hills 
and plains of Asia long ago, and floods with strange 
and living light every text of your Bible for you, 
from Genesis to Bevelation. Ah ! this faith, what 

* la speaking of the Athanasian creed, we have had chiefly in 
mind the meeting of a certain City vestry to petition the Bishop 
of London to do away with it—a proceeding which seemed 
supremely ridiculous. For the Creed was either false or true. If 
false, the Bishop had no need to trouble himself about it, as it was 
null of its own self. If true, all the bishops of Christendom might 
knock their heads against it in vain. 


234 


A HOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


is it? A mystic instinct, planted within the highest 
reason, running away with it up before the throne of 
God, where otherwise it could never reach. “There 
lives more faith in honest doubt,” writes the poet. 
Very beautiful; hut a lie tricked out in crinoline and 
chignon, while the truth is obliged to go in limp gar¬ 
ments and a poke-bonnet, and is jeered at as she goes. 
But go back, Messieurs, upon the chain of your life, and 
look upon that little mass of half-animate human flesh in 
the cradle; and have you no eyes to see the awful 
Infinite Power that is around us, nursing the little baby: 
sending cargoes of immortal life down the five rivers of 
its Eden; thrilling through its touch, breathing into 
its mouth and nostrils, whispering eternal lullabies into 
its ears, shining in deathless light through its eyes into 
its little soul, hurtling and whistling through the forest 
on its head, and lifting—lifting—lifting it into the 
vision of this awful House, gleaming with suns and 
stars, and built by the Carpenter of Galilee? An 
imperfect vision, it is true; but are eyes of clay the 
proper material through which to gaze upon the face of 
God ? Surely, to the reader of intelligent insight, 
there is no room for faith that is honest doubt here. 
How pray, Messieurs ye philosophers, can you identify 
Him who died upon the Jewish Primrose Hill so long 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


235 


ago, with Him who gives life to the little baby ? Ho. 
Then seek, and seek, and seek for the key of this won¬ 
derful riddle, and we pledge you our honour that 
the seeking of a long lifetime will be well and nobly 
spent. 


But what becomes of the little baby ? Refusing, it 
may be, to stop at home, and keep the house that is 
erecting for him in order, he goes gadding after the 
whisperers of “pleasant things;” so that when the 
Angel builder shall have carried his last brick and his 
last can of water to the roof, and prepares to take this 
scaffolding away, it is doubtful what the fashion of the 
building may be: ringed round with jewels like those 
echeloned along the heavens, and clothed with eternal 
sweetness and light, “the garb of the virtues three,” or 
marred into utter shame and nakedness and death, by 
the Sham who had enthroned himself within. Yes, 0 
philosopher of sweetness and light, men may rail at you, 
but after all you are not so very wrong. But one ques¬ 
tion we would reverently ask of you : Where are we to 
purchase those attributes of the skies? Is it from 
mathematics and grocers’ science—those wet blankets 
of a warm human heart; or is it from philosophy, which 
may, for aught we know, be the delusions of foolish 


236 


A J100K ABOUT SHAMS. 


men? Shall we culture ourselves by becoming more 
intimately acquainted with the liars and the shams, 
who for the most part have always come uppermost in 
the history of the world: with Alexander drunken with 
his harlots in Persepolis, or Napoleon as the hero of 
Marengo, a battle which he never won ?—For a series 
of circumstances—which, instead of being commanded, 
commanded him, mocked him and buffeted him, and 
then turned round and gave the victory into his hands, 
to teach him what a sham he was. Nay, nay, sir; go 
back upon your science and begin again. And that 
you may not begin in vain, we would whisper into your 
ear privately, If you want your garden cultured with 
sweetness and light, he pleased to direct your attention 
to the Gardener who showed himself to Magdalene : for 
these things are in the possession of Him alone—who 
floods his gardens often with such deluge of softest 
light and love, that you might dream and dream and 
never dream the like,—and who weeds them often 
in a mystery of pain:—but if you once saw the mar¬ 
vellous effect for beauty and loveliness of the weeding, 
you would he weeded a thousand times a day. And in 
this matter of sweetness and light, we have known 
ignorant people who have had it in over-abundance: 
in this lore of sweetness and light, we have 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


237 


known coster-women who were senior wranglers and 
savants who were wooden-spoons. But go on, thou 
philosopher of sweetness and light! thou hast caught 
a truth by the tail, and by pulling it well, thou mayst 
yet have it all. 

So what became of the little baby ? Frightened, it 
may be, at the disorder of his own home, he goes out a 
truant child upon the face of all the earth, in search of 
the footsteps of God; but none of his footsteps are to be 
found. He climbs the hills and hits the rocks for com¬ 
fort ; but little comfort is to be got out of them. Friend, 
a word with you! You are hitting the wrong stone. 
First of all, address yourself to that primeval flint which 
you carry within your own breast, and which bars your 
gate into eternity, 0 baby-smiter of rocks. And if you 
hit it boldly, we dare to promise you such a thrillingly 
ecstatic vista, that you shall love us and thank us 
for the suggestion for evermore. For there is imminent 
peril that when the Great Geologist comes to examine 
the material of his kingdoms, and while you are looking 
after things that have small concern for you, your own 
“formation” may be found to be of the wrong sort; and 
that “vanities,” “pleasant vices,” £ s. d., and a thou¬ 
sand other evanescent things, may be scored in continuous 


238 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


strata from cap a pie of your soul. Pray, Messieurs, is 
there any good reason why such a flimsy formation 
should last, in the dissolving light of the Eternal Sun ? 
Ah, thou hast caught it, 0 Sham! 

“ Der Geist der stetz verneint! ” cries the dapper 
Philister Spirit:—“you throw down, hut you build 
not up. Therefore the spirit of the devil is yours,” 
We beg your pardon, sirs; we throw down but the 
card-houses of the shams, and that only to get a clearer 
view of the marvellous proportions of yon eternal 
building,—which you may see, friend Philister, if you 
only take the trouble to look, and appeal to Him who 
sent you here in the proper way—as a little child, or a 
man dropped out of Jupiter or the moon, having left his 
luggage behind him. And you, 0 Plebs, worshippers of 
the Philister Spirit, and yet whom God seems to love 
with a love that would appear unjust, if He were not 
God, to his other creatures—a word with you: not that 
we are foolish enough to believe that any great number 
of you will ever adopt our suggestion; a few of you 
may; and those you shall hunt and despise, on the same 
principle that the antediluvians laughed at Noah, and 
the men of the doomed city jeered Lot. Nevertheless, 
a word with you. You want your reforms, and to scale 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 


239 


your millennium with a coup de main; your reforms and 
millennium meaning the devil’s liberty to do whatever 
you like. And if you will have it, 0 plebs, it shall he 
given to you: you shall break your Hyde Park palings, 
and you shall have your devil’s liberty, but—you shall 
pay your devil’s price, bound round your screaming 
orators; and that, permit us to assure you, 0 plebs, 
upon our word of honour is no joke. And be pleased to 
remember that this sort of thing you have been at for 
these three thousand years, from Timoleon to Gracchus, 
and from Gracchus to Odgers; and it is within the mark 
to say that even now you have just arrived at the place 
whence you set out. But if you want a reform that is 
worth the name, we would indicate to you the way in 
which it is to be found. Begin at home—in the realms 
of your own heart; dethrone the sham kings who reign 
there, and who persecute you with demon cruelty— 
whispering all the while that your torturers are your 
neighbours—whose riches entail upon them as many 
troubles as your own poverty, 0 plebs, upon you. Then 
pass your reform-bills in those realms where God should 
reign: appoint a sweeping commission of inquiry into 
the rotten boroughs and corrupt practices that exist 
there, and go and lay the report of your commission 
before your Great King, whom you will find as radical 


240 


A BOOK ABOUT SHAMS. 




a reformer as you—appealing to Him for help. And 
He won’t harangue you in fine-sounding platitudes, 
hut He will do for you whatever you need, and in 
manner that you shall marvel at the divine simplicity 
of it: making you walking editions of heaven upon 
earth, so that, unless in love and pity for your kind, 
you shall not care if a million of IS'eros governed the 
affairs of men. And He will lead you into the truth, 
and set you upon David’s high hill, which you will 
wonder to learn, 0 plcbs, is a sterner matter of fact, 
and higher hy many yards, than your own sweet Hill 
of Primrose—He will lead you into the truth, and teach 
you the reason you despised and rejected it was only 
because you were—Shams. 

Messieurs, we take off our hats to you, and send no 
shot into your boat: but pray that ye reach the land, 
and fare well. 


J. BERRY, PRINTER, NOTTINGHAM. 
























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